To accompany the current exhibition, Diego Rivera: The Italian Sketchbook, 1920-21, the gallery has published an online catalogue available for viewing here. The catalogue features high resolution images of individual sketchbook pages, historical photographs, and commentary and annotations by Rivera’s friend and fellow artist, Jean Charlot.
Press
Isabel De Obaldía: Metates 2012
This short film documents the preliminary stages of the artist’s process for creating a group of large sand cast glass metates made at Wheaton Arts in Millville, NJ.
Film and original music by Pedro Joaquin Icaza.
“The work with the most direct visual links to Panama’s archaeological past is De Obaldía’s series of cast-glass metates, based on the Pre-Columbian stone ceremonial ‘thrones’ found in Panama and Costa Rica. Stone metates, used to grind maize and other foodstuffs, were probably incorporated into ancient rituals and the decorative quality of some Central American examples certainly suggests a ceremonial function. Carved from porous volcanic stone, they often have protruding animal heads and tails and are covered in geometric relief carving. Linked to rites of fertility, it has also been suggested that some of the larger and more ornate examples may have served as thrones for rulers.”
-Susan L. Aberth, “Emissaries from the Primordial Realms: The Presence of Pre-Columbian and Indigenous Art in the Work of Isabel De Obaldía”, essay from the catalogue for Primordial: Paintings and Sculpture by Isabel De Obaldía at Museum of Art | Fort Lauderdale, Nova Southereastern University, 2011-2012
Master Drawings New York 2012
Master Drawings New York will return to the Upper East Side for the sixth consecutive year from January 21-28, 2011, with a private viewing on Friday, January 20 from 4-8 pm. This year twenty-three exhibitions from the UK, France, Spain, Germany and the US will be on view, enabling connoisseurs to buy drawings across a broad range of price points at galleries all within walking distance of one another. The selection will include oil sketches, watercolours, drawings in charcoal, pencil and pen and ink. Be sure to visit Mary-Anne Martin|Fine Art during this exciting event.
To learn more about Master Drawings New York visit the official website.
Virtual Tour of “Primordial: Paintings and Sculpture by Isabel De Obaldía” at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale
“Primordial: Paintings and Sculpture by Isabel De Obaldía” Now on View at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale
Primordial: Paintings and Sculpture by Isabel De Obaldía opened to the public on September 25. The show received a glowing review from Rod Stafford Hagwood of the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Hagwood interviewed Irvin Lippman, director of the museum, who said that De Obaldía’s work, “is a powerful expressive force [that] really captures the spirit of nature.” Hagwood also spoke with Susan Aberth, assistant professor of art history at Bard College, who added “Her work has a great dramatic presence. There is a light-enhanced quality but the pieces are also very heavy looking. They speak to the past. And then there’s the size of them. There is a psychological weightiness there. They feel almost alive…They look ancient…animals with fangs and spikes and things that attack…menacing males, mostly stern and holding a weapon of some sort.” The exhibition continues through May 27, 2012. read more…
Related event
Isabel De Obaldía: Communion with Beasts, 2010
Filmed and directed by Pedro Joaquin Icaza
Isabel De Obaldía Retrospective to be held at The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale
The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale will present a mid-career retrospective of Isabel De Obaldía’s work, opening to the public September 25, 2011. The show, titled “Primordial: Paintings and Sculptures by Isabel De Obaldía, 1985-2011,” will feature approximately 100 works by the artist, as well as a number of pre-Columbian objects that relate to her artistic process. The exhibition has been scheduled to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Studio Glass Movement in the United States and will be on display through May 27, 2012.
To view the official press release from the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, click here.
Arte Al Día Commemorates Women Gallerists
The current issue of Arte Al Día International magazine focuses on the growing significance of Latin American art in the global art world. One article in particular, titled “Latin American Art in the Visionary Eye of Women Gallerists,” addresses the role a number of noteworthy women gallerists have played in shaping this sector of the art market. The author, Janet Batet, notes that,
The first name that comes to mind for historical reasons is that of Mary-Anne Martin, who developed a praiseworthy effort towards the recognition of modern Latin American artists from her position at the auction house Sotheby’s New York. She was responsible for three capital events for the Latin American Art market which would lead to the creation of Sotheby’s Latin American Art Department. These were: the inclusion in the 1976 modern art auction sale of thirty pieces of Mexican art and their successful sale, the first auction sale of Mexican works in the United States in 1977, and later, in 1979 the first Latin American art auction sale.
In 1982, Mary-Anne left Sotheby’s to establish her own gallery and fulfill a task which has been crucial for the launching of such figures as Gunther Gerzso and Francisco Toledo, among others.
To read this article in full please visit the magazine’s website at http://www.artealdia.com/International and click on the current issue.
The New York Times Reviews Master Drawings in New York
MAM/FA’s Surrealist drawing show received a favorable mention in Roberta Smith’s article in The New York Times Arts section on January 27, 2011. Ms. Smith featured an image of Frida Kahlo, “El Verdadero Vacilón,” noting how the drawing is a “dense, extended doodle, it embeds a lexicon of Kahlo motifs — a hand, veins, some eyes, several breasts — in a geodesic constellation fraught with stars and spirals that seem straight out of late Kandinsky.”