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Curator of Latino art E. Carmen Ramos has been acquiring several artworks for the museum in preparation for this exhibition. Below are details on three significant pieces that have been added to the museum's collection over the last few months. The painting by Rafael Soriano was also recently featured in Cuban Art News, posted in both English and Spanish.
Paintings by Rafael Soriano allow the museum to capture the perspective of the first generation of Cuban exiles who arrived as adults in the U.S., having left behind significant careers in Cuba. Soriano favored abstraction since the late 1940s, but the rational and optimistic worldview that underpinned his geometric paintings was shattered after he arrived in Miami in 1962. He found his way back to art by creating a new visual vocabulary infused with the three-dimensional qualities he had learned in his early training as a sculptor.
Humanscape 62: Brownies of the Southwest is considered to be one of the most iconic Latino images in the history of American art. Texas-based artists Melesio (Mel) Casas painted it in 1970 employing a pop art style to contest stereotypes in American popular culture. The painting humorously juxtaposes references to people, cultures, things associated with the color brown, and the Southwest region of the United States. Casas mixes empty stereotypes of brown-skinned Americans with trivialized references drawn from everyday life to underscore how American consumer culture demeaned Latino culture.
This painting is currently on view in the contemporary art galleries on the third floor of the museum.
Nocturnal (Horizon Line) is part of a recent series of landscapes made entirely from mined graphite. This technically impressive series required Teresita Fernández to work with scientists to learn how to manipulate the medium. Nocturnal (Horizon Line) takes on the scale of the largest, western landscape paintings, yet it does not depict a specific location. Fernández presents a soothing nighttime scene in which viewers standing directly in front of the artwork feel they are in a physical space.
This painting is currently on view in the contemporary art galleries on the third floor of the museum.
-- Georgina
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Smithsonian American Art Museum
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