Lake Chapala Artists and Authors

Chapala-born Jorge Seimandi Ramírez was a highly-respected art educator at the University of Guadalajara for more than 40 years. He was not interested in the commercial side of art and his own work was rarely sold or exhibited.

Seimandi was born in Chapala on 2 February 1929, the son of Italian-born businessman Juan Seimandi and his wife, Refugio Ramírez, a local Chapala girl. Jorge Seimandi studied art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Guadalajara from 1947 to 1950. His teachers included Ixca Farías, Leopoldo Bancalari and Rubén Mora Gálvez.

Jorge Seimandi. Lake Chapala. Credit: Arq. Juan Jorge Seimandi.

Recognized for his proficiency in both oils and watercolors, Seimandi painted still lifes, figurative studies, portraits and landscapes, some of which were exhibited in the 1950s.

His work was exhibited at the Exhibition of the School of Fine Arts (Exposición Anual de la Escuela de Bellas Artes) in Guadalajara in 1949 (where he won a “diploma of recognition”); in two shows at the city’s Galerías Degollado, in 1957 and 1958;and at at the Mexican-North American Cultural Institute (Instituto Cultural Mexicano Norteamericano de Jalisco). Seimandi  held solo shows at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas (1970; 1994) and at the Galería Jorge Martínez (1998).

Jorge Seimandi. Undated still life. Photo credit: A. Hinojosa/Informador.

Along with Alfonso de Lara Gallardo, Jorge Navarro Hernández and others, Seimandi was an active member of Grupo Integración, a loose collective of modernistic artists founded in 1966.

Seimandi was never a full-time professional painter but pursued art in his spare time while earning a qualification in law. He was appointed head of the Jalisco State Tourism Office in 1957. He taught art and art history at the University of Guadalajara’s Escuela de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts School) from 1953 to 1981, where he inspired the next generation of artists. He directed the school from 1978-1981. He was also appointed Professor of Drawing for the Jalisco State Primary Schools, a position that enabled him to research basic education in drawing.

Jorge Seimandi. Still life. Credit: Arq. Juan Jorge Seimandi.

Following his death in Guadalajara on 2 October 2013, at the age of 84, his family announced their intention to compile a complete catalog of his works, many of which he gave to friends, and to arrange a retrospective exhibition at the University of Guadalajara’s Museo de las Artes. If they are successful, this will be a show worth seeing!

Acknowledgment

• My thanks to Arq. Juan Jorge Seimandi for sharing photos of his father’s paintings, and for permission to reproduce them here. Arq. Juan Jorge Seimandi is writing a richly illustrated book about his father’s life and work.

Sources

• El Informador: 25 April 1970; 26 June 1994; 25 Nov 1998; 28 Nov 1998.
• Thamara Villaseñor. 2013. “Seimandi y su pasión por la pintura.” El Informador, 1 Dec 2013, 11-B.

Comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios are welcomed. Please use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts, or email us.

The renowned Mexican-American artist Eugenio Quesada (1927-2011) lived in Ajijic in the early 1960s. Quesada had a distinguished artistic career and is considered an important figure in the history of Mexican-American art.

Eugenio Reynaldo Quesada, usually known simply as “Gene”, was born in Wickenburg, Arizona, on 24 May 1927. He was born into one of the town’s pioneer families, the grandson of Teodoro Mazon Ocampo and Mariana Rodriguez Ocampo, who settled in Wickenburg, about sixty kilometers northwest of Phoenix, in 1860.

Eugene Quesada, 2009

Quesada graduated from Wickenburg High School in 1945 and then served in the U.S. Navy. After the war, he attended Arizona State University (ASU), from where he graduated with a B.A. degree in May 1952. He continued his art studies in California and New York. In 1951, he was one of several artists who worked with French-born Mexican muralist Jean Charlot on the fresco “Man’s Wisdom Subdues the Aggressive Forces of Nature” in the ASU Administration building.

Early in his career, Quesada found inspiration in the oversized work of other Mexican muralists, including Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. He went on to paint several murals of his own in Mexico between 1963 and 1970, but is better known today for his exquisitely executed charcoal portraits, often of children, ink sketches and small paintings.

He lived in Guadalajara and Ajijic for six years in the 1960s, a key period in his artistic development. In the words of his obituary:

“This long residence in Mexico flavored the stuttering lines, torsos and oblique forms that became the core of Quesada’s body of work. His work deals in the barest essentials in defining his subjects. Texture and color used to define form, rather than specific objects make his paintings appear larger than they are. His drawings suggest brief, but very effective visual statements.”

When he returned to Arizona, Quesada left several small paintings of Ajijic children with the Crump family in Ajijic. The family also owns Quesada’s portrait of Carlos Espíritu which dates from the 1960s. Espíritu was a well-known guitarist who resided in Ajijic and taught guitar for several years.

Eugene Quesada. ca 1964, Portrait of Carlos Espíritu. (image courtesy of Raymond Crump)

Quesada held his first solo show of paintings in March 1968, at the Casa de Cultura in Guadalajara. It was very well attended. His three sisters from Phoenix flew down for the opening and other guests included fellow artists Peter Huf and his wife Eunice Hunt, as well as Booth and Sue Waterbury, the then managers of Posada Ajijic.

At a group show in Guadalajara in June 1968 – First Annual Graphic Arts Show at La Galeria (878 Ocho de Julio, Guadalajara) – Quesada exhibited a portrait of a child entitled “Mire Pa’alla”. Other Lakeside artists with work in this show included Tom Brudenell, John Frost, Paul Hachten, Allyn Hunt, Peter Huf, Eunice Hunt, John K. Peterson and Tully Judson Petty.

Eugene Quesada. 1964, Sonañdo. Charcoal. (from Quirarte)

After his years in Mexico, Quesada taught art at Glendale Community College and was professor of fine arts at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, until his retirement in 1989. Following his retirement, he and his siblings established the Jose Franco and Francisca Ocampo Quesada Research Award Endowment at ASU which funds student research that increases the understanding of the Hispanic community.

Among the other one-person shows held by Quesada in his productive career were shows in Tempe, Arizona (1970, 1972) and Glendale, Arizona (1980). Group shows included the Annual All-Student and Alumni Art Exhibit in Tempe (1955, 1956); San Francisco, California (1969); Phoenix, Arizona (1970); “Five Chicano Artists” in Paradise Valley, Arizona (1971); League of United Latin American Citizens, Washington, D.C. (1971); Mexican American Art Symposium, San Antonio, Texas (1973), “Chicanos and the Arts”, Phoenix ((1975); Group Exhibit, Yuma, Arizona (1975); Two-man exhibit in Tempe (1976); the Heard Museum, Phoenix (1976); the New Hispanic Exhibit, Washington, D.C. (1978); “Arte Sweat & Tears”, Museo Chicano, Phoenix, (1980); and “Primer Encuentro Cultural: Chicano”, University of Guadalajara, Jalisco (1983).

Gene Quesada. Undated. Untitled. (image courtesy of Raymond Crump)

Quesada’s work featured in two major traveling exhibitions of Mexican-American art. The first was “Artists, Hispano / Mexican-American / Chicano Artists, Hispano / Mexican-American / Chicano Artists, Hispano / Mexican-American / Chicano” opened at The Lobby Gallery-Illinois Bell in Chicago in 1976 and then visited Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, Texas; De Cordova Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts; Illinois State Museum, Springfield, Illinois; Mexican Museum, San Francisco, California and ended at the Boise Gallery of Art, Boise, Idaho, in March 1977. The second was “The Latin American Presence in The United States, 1920-1970”, organized by The Bronx Museum of the Arts. This opened in New York in September 1988 and then visited El Paso Museum of Art (1989), San Diego Museum of Art (1989), Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquena, San Juan, Puerto Rico (1989) and ended at The Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida (1990).

Gene Quesada. 1968. Untitled. (image courtesy of Raymond Crump)

A major retrospective of Quesada’s work was held in 2010, entitled “Figurative Impressions by Eugene Quesada, 50 Years: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings – a tribute to the Mexican American Artist”. It opened in San Diego, California, in August of that year.

The following year, on 31 December 2011, following a long illness, Eugenio Quesada passed away in his native Wickenburg. Many of Quesada’s papers are now housed in the Arizona State University Libraries Chicano Research Collection.

These two short YouTube videos feature many examples of his art:

• Eugene Quesada – 1997 and
• Eugene Quesada – 2001

Sources:

• Raymond Crump – personal communication
• Guadalajara Reporter: 9 Mar 1968, 15 June 1968
• Obituary: The Wickenburg Sun (Wickenburg, Arizona), 11 January 2012.
• Jacinto Quirarte. 1973. Mexican American Artists. Univ of Texas Press.

Sombrero Books welcomes comments, corrections or additional material related to any of the writers and artists featured in our series of mini-bios. Please email us or use the comments feature at the bottom of individual posts.