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拍品专文
Artists should not be preoccupied with trends, but rather with what they feel. Whether they make paintings, sculpture, or objects, they should be grounded in honesty, as that is the only way artists can convey what is essential-their vision of life.
-Estela Shapiro
For Estela and Joaquín Shapiro their genuine love of art and the pleasure they derived from it was a constant throughout their lives.
Estela and Joaquín began collecting in the 1960s and developed close relationships with many artists with whom they often collaborated closely. Their support and patronage was critical to the creation of important works that even today attests to the unique bonds of friendship the Shapiros cultivated with several artists. Such is the case with Rufino Tamayo and the innovative printmaking technique he developed in the 1970s, known as mixografías, with legendary master printer Luis Remba and which he exhibited at Galería El Círculo co-owned by Remba and the Shapiros. Tamayo was also the impetus for the Shapiros encounter with the work of the gifted Oaxacan surrealist painter Rodolfo Morales who in 1975 they invited to exhibit at Galería El Círculo. The exhibition marked the beginning of a long collaboration and the Shapiros were instrumental to Morales's commercial and critical success in Mexico.
The 1970s marked a significant shift in the role the Shapiros would play in the art world. In 1977, Estela and Joaquín decided to further solidify their presence in the art market by launching the now famous Galería Estela Shapiro in Mexico's Zona Rosa. From the beginning many of the artists they had befriended over the years--Gunther Gerzso, Juan Soriano, and Rodolfo Nieto--all enthusiastically supported their endeavor that went well beyond a traditional gallery exhibition program to encompass a social space for gatherings, music, shared experiences and laughs.
Over the years, Galería Estela Shapiro became one of the most respected and acclaimed among Mexico's galleries. They produced countless exhibitions that live on today through exhibition catalogues and books thereby forever preserving the creative legacies of their makers. During the gallery's final phase from 1985-2004 at its home in the Anzures section of Mexico City, the gallery hosted musicians, actors, and poets in an effort to offer the public the full spectrum of visual and performing arts offerings.
The gallery became emblematic as a cultural center that undoubtedly laid the foundation for new ways of conceiving and presenting the arts as well as supporting creativity within the arts community.
Towards the end of her life, Estela succeeded in accomplishing her main dream: to make art her guide, her motivation. It was a path that transformed her life--a path with no return.
Estela and Joaquín Shapiro both dedicated their lives to art, a life they lived with passion and complete surrender.
Doris Shapiro, Mexico City, September 2013
More than his [artistic] period of delicate color subtleties, Nieto's lasting image is in his intense, forceful painting-one of violent color, of rotund forms.
Jorge Alberto Manrique[1]
Mexican artist Rodolfo Nieto belongs to the Ruptura (Rupture) era of the mid-twentieth century, those artists who followed the lead of Rufino Tamayo and José Luis Cuevas in "breaking" with the figurative social realism of the Mexican School of Painting challenging the dominant visual narratives of Mexican Muralism to experiment with neo-figuration and geometric, lyrical, and figurative abstraction. Nieto is also rightly considered a contributor to the dissemination of the so-called "Oaxaca School" under the mantle of his compatriot Tamayo. Nieto's subject matter exhibits a clear affinity with the latter's earlier animals (Dogs, Animals, Lion and Horse of the 1940s, for example), both artists are indebted to Pablo Picasso, and the poetic universalism of Tamayo's visual language inspired Nieto's own.
A Oaxaca native, Nieto moved to Mexico City at thirteen soon after losing his father to typhus. He attended La Esmeralda, the National Fine Arts School for two years (1954-56) before exiting as a self-proclaimed anti-academic; there, Nieto nevertheless met teacher Juan Soriano, significant in his artistic development. Soriano and Nieto shared in common a close friendship with the eccentric Jesús (Chucho) Reyes Ferreira, self-taught painter, and avid collector of popular art and Colonial era objects, from whom they both likely gained an appreciation for artesanía (popular craft), and love of pattern and saturated color. Nieto, who looked up to the older Soriano as a mentor, would have known the latter's breakthrough works of that time such as the 1956 Luminous Fish. Nieto's signature style owes much to lessons learned from Soriano's dynamism, strident palette, and particular figurative abstraction. Even so, additional experiences and sources, both native and European, equally informed Nieto's artistic development.
When Nieto first presented his work to the public with individual exhibitions held simultaneously at the San Carlos Academy and Chapultepec Galleries in 1958, he caught the attention of Artes de México's Bernard Siemiatycki, who became the young artist's patron and supporter, securing Nieto the possibility of gallery representation at the Galerie de France.[2] Recently married, Nieto and his wife Marta Guillermoprieto immediately left by boat for Europe. During the next ten years in Paris, Nieto established meaningful relationships with numerous artists and vanguard writers of the time: he worked with fellow Oaxacan Francisco Toledo at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 printshop; he reencountered Soriano; Julio Cortázar became Nieto's close friend; Octavio Paz wrote an essay for Nieto's first individual exhibition with the Galerie de France in 1963; and he also established ties with the likes of Alejo Carpentier, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Pablo Neruda, among others. His most notable stylistic influence was not primarily Jean Dubuffet, who he studied closely, but fellow Oaxacan Tamayo, who Nieto also befriended in Paris.[3]
The Oaxacan School, so named by Andrés Henestrosa in 1978,[4] is composed of two dominant stylistic branches: Toledo, who became known for his eroticized anthropomorphic creatures, and Tamayo. Oaxaca artists Maximo Javier and Sergio Hernández for example, followed Toledo's shamanic vision of the orgiastic merging of human, nature and the animal world, one grounded in the mythological and illogical. On the other hand Nieto, and Rodolfo Morales to an extent, echoed the more conservative Tamayo employing vibrant local colors, musical rhythm, pattern, and the figure simplified to geometric form based on familiarity with pre-Hispanic sculpture as is apparent in Toro (the present lot), Mujer en la tina (lot 26) , and Mujer en la regadera (lot 29). Nieto was freer than Tamayo--less careful in his brushwork, his surfaces less worked, and his figures, whether animal or human, more static.
Upon his return to Mexico in 1968, Nieto made repeated study trips to Oaxaca visiting the pre-Columbian sites of Monte Albán, Mitla, and Zaachila, while collecting Zapotec artifacts, as well as artesanía such as ceramics, textiles, and rope work.[5] Like Tamayo, Nieto constantly drew inspiration from his awareness of the European avant-garde in combination with his profound connection to his native land and culture; for example, while Nieto's sympathy with Dubuffet's whimsical bestiary is evident in his illustrations for Jorge Luis Borges' Fantastic Zoology of 1967, pre-Columbian form is evoked by Toro--"a bull sitting on the earth like a pyramid," according to art critic Antonio Rodríguez.[6]
Nieto's recent retrospective Imágenes latentes at Mexico City's Palacio de Cultura Banamex in the summer of 2010, certainly confirms the lasting effects of the artist's "intense, forceful painting," as Manrique calls it, powerful in its rhythmic brushwork, aggressive color, and pleasing form.
Teresa Eckmann, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Latin American Art History, University of Texas, San Antonio
1. Jorge Alberto Manrique, "Artistas de Oaxaca" in Hechizo de Oaxaca (Monterrey: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, 1991), 238. Más quizá que el período de delicadas sutilezas colorísticas, la imagen que perdura de Nieto está en esa pintura fuerte, contundente, de violencia colorística, de formas rotundas [. . .] Author's translation.
2. Jaime Moreno Villarreal, "Lo que era todo tiene que ser nada," in Homaje a Rodolfo Nieto (Monterrey: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, 1995), 24.
3. Ibid., 25-26.
4. See David Martín del Campo, "Los colores de antequera: pintores contemporáneos de Oaxaca," in Memoria en papel, 2.4 (1992): 57.
5. Villarreal, "Lo que era todo tiene que ser nada," 32-33.
6. Martín del Campo, "Los colores de antequera," 61.
-Estela Shapiro
For Estela and Joaquín Shapiro their genuine love of art and the pleasure they derived from it was a constant throughout their lives.
Estela and Joaquín began collecting in the 1960s and developed close relationships with many artists with whom they often collaborated closely. Their support and patronage was critical to the creation of important works that even today attests to the unique bonds of friendship the Shapiros cultivated with several artists. Such is the case with Rufino Tamayo and the innovative printmaking technique he developed in the 1970s, known as mixografías, with legendary master printer Luis Remba and which he exhibited at Galería El Círculo co-owned by Remba and the Shapiros. Tamayo was also the impetus for the Shapiros encounter with the work of the gifted Oaxacan surrealist painter Rodolfo Morales who in 1975 they invited to exhibit at Galería El Círculo. The exhibition marked the beginning of a long collaboration and the Shapiros were instrumental to Morales's commercial and critical success in Mexico.
The 1970s marked a significant shift in the role the Shapiros would play in the art world. In 1977, Estela and Joaquín decided to further solidify their presence in the art market by launching the now famous Galería Estela Shapiro in Mexico's Zona Rosa. From the beginning many of the artists they had befriended over the years--Gunther Gerzso, Juan Soriano, and Rodolfo Nieto--all enthusiastically supported their endeavor that went well beyond a traditional gallery exhibition program to encompass a social space for gatherings, music, shared experiences and laughs.
Over the years, Galería Estela Shapiro became one of the most respected and acclaimed among Mexico's galleries. They produced countless exhibitions that live on today through exhibition catalogues and books thereby forever preserving the creative legacies of their makers. During the gallery's final phase from 1985-2004 at its home in the Anzures section of Mexico City, the gallery hosted musicians, actors, and poets in an effort to offer the public the full spectrum of visual and performing arts offerings.
The gallery became emblematic as a cultural center that undoubtedly laid the foundation for new ways of conceiving and presenting the arts as well as supporting creativity within the arts community.
Towards the end of her life, Estela succeeded in accomplishing her main dream: to make art her guide, her motivation. It was a path that transformed her life--a path with no return.
Estela and Joaquín Shapiro both dedicated their lives to art, a life they lived with passion and complete surrender.
Doris Shapiro, Mexico City, September 2013
More than his [artistic] period of delicate color subtleties, Nieto's lasting image is in his intense, forceful painting-one of violent color, of rotund forms.
Jorge Alberto Manrique[1]
Mexican artist Rodolfo Nieto belongs to the Ruptura (Rupture) era of the mid-twentieth century, those artists who followed the lead of Rufino Tamayo and José Luis Cuevas in "breaking" with the figurative social realism of the Mexican School of Painting challenging the dominant visual narratives of Mexican Muralism to experiment with neo-figuration and geometric, lyrical, and figurative abstraction. Nieto is also rightly considered a contributor to the dissemination of the so-called "Oaxaca School" under the mantle of his compatriot Tamayo. Nieto's subject matter exhibits a clear affinity with the latter's earlier animals (Dogs, Animals, Lion and Horse of the 1940s, for example), both artists are indebted to Pablo Picasso, and the poetic universalism of Tamayo's visual language inspired Nieto's own.
A Oaxaca native, Nieto moved to Mexico City at thirteen soon after losing his father to typhus. He attended La Esmeralda, the National Fine Arts School for two years (1954-56) before exiting as a self-proclaimed anti-academic; there, Nieto nevertheless met teacher Juan Soriano, significant in his artistic development. Soriano and Nieto shared in common a close friendship with the eccentric Jesús (Chucho) Reyes Ferreira, self-taught painter, and avid collector of popular art and Colonial era objects, from whom they both likely gained an appreciation for artesanía (popular craft), and love of pattern and saturated color. Nieto, who looked up to the older Soriano as a mentor, would have known the latter's breakthrough works of that time such as the 1956 Luminous Fish. Nieto's signature style owes much to lessons learned from Soriano's dynamism, strident palette, and particular figurative abstraction. Even so, additional experiences and sources, both native and European, equally informed Nieto's artistic development.
When Nieto first presented his work to the public with individual exhibitions held simultaneously at the San Carlos Academy and Chapultepec Galleries in 1958, he caught the attention of Artes de México's Bernard Siemiatycki, who became the young artist's patron and supporter, securing Nieto the possibility of gallery representation at the Galerie de France.[2] Recently married, Nieto and his wife Marta Guillermoprieto immediately left by boat for Europe. During the next ten years in Paris, Nieto established meaningful relationships with numerous artists and vanguard writers of the time: he worked with fellow Oaxacan Francisco Toledo at Stanley William Hayter's Atelier 17 printshop; he reencountered Soriano; Julio Cortázar became Nieto's close friend; Octavio Paz wrote an essay for Nieto's first individual exhibition with the Galerie de France in 1963; and he also established ties with the likes of Alejo Carpentier, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, and Pablo Neruda, among others. His most notable stylistic influence was not primarily Jean Dubuffet, who he studied closely, but fellow Oaxacan Tamayo, who Nieto also befriended in Paris.[3]
The Oaxacan School, so named by Andrés Henestrosa in 1978,[4] is composed of two dominant stylistic branches: Toledo, who became known for his eroticized anthropomorphic creatures, and Tamayo. Oaxaca artists Maximo Javier and Sergio Hernández for example, followed Toledo's shamanic vision of the orgiastic merging of human, nature and the animal world, one grounded in the mythological and illogical. On the other hand Nieto, and Rodolfo Morales to an extent, echoed the more conservative Tamayo employing vibrant local colors, musical rhythm, pattern, and the figure simplified to geometric form based on familiarity with pre-Hispanic sculpture as is apparent in Toro (the present lot), Mujer en la tina (lot 26) , and Mujer en la regadera (lot 29). Nieto was freer than Tamayo--less careful in his brushwork, his surfaces less worked, and his figures, whether animal or human, more static.
Upon his return to Mexico in 1968, Nieto made repeated study trips to Oaxaca visiting the pre-Columbian sites of Monte Albán, Mitla, and Zaachila, while collecting Zapotec artifacts, as well as artesanía such as ceramics, textiles, and rope work.[5] Like Tamayo, Nieto constantly drew inspiration from his awareness of the European avant-garde in combination with his profound connection to his native land and culture; for example, while Nieto's sympathy with Dubuffet's whimsical bestiary is evident in his illustrations for Jorge Luis Borges' Fantastic Zoology of 1967, pre-Columbian form is evoked by Toro--"a bull sitting on the earth like a pyramid," according to art critic Antonio Rodríguez.[6]
Nieto's recent retrospective Imágenes latentes at Mexico City's Palacio de Cultura Banamex in the summer of 2010, certainly confirms the lasting effects of the artist's "intense, forceful painting," as Manrique calls it, powerful in its rhythmic brushwork, aggressive color, and pleasing form.
Teresa Eckmann, Assistant Professor of Contemporary Latin American Art History, University of Texas, San Antonio
1. Jorge Alberto Manrique, "Artistas de Oaxaca" in Hechizo de Oaxaca (Monterrey: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, 1991), 238. Más quizá que el período de delicadas sutilezas colorísticas, la imagen que perdura de Nieto está en esa pintura fuerte, contundente, de violencia colorística, de formas rotundas [. . .] Author's translation.
2. Jaime Moreno Villarreal, "Lo que era todo tiene que ser nada," in Homaje a Rodolfo Nieto (Monterrey: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, 1995), 24.
3. Ibid., 25-26.
4. See David Martín del Campo, "Los colores de antequera: pintores contemporáneos de Oaxaca," in Memoria en papel, 2.4 (1992): 57.
5. Villarreal, "Lo que era todo tiene que ser nada," 32-33.
6. Martín del Campo, "Los colores de antequera," 61.