Art of the Week

Art of the Americas: Latin America and the United States,
1800 to Now!
on display now at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Coronel - Rosa in the Corridor

Diebenkorn - Woman and Checkerboard

Art of the Americas: Latin America and the United States, 1800 to Now! the dramatic exhibition now on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, is all about contrasts. For example, look at the different ways a Mexican and an United States artist of about the same time portray women.

Rafael Coronel
Rosa in the Corridor portrays Rafael Coronel's grandmother. In representing Rosa's chiseled profile as the face of experience, this work suggests the passage of time. Its evocative atmosphere of solitude speaks to Existential concerns about modern alienation that were shared by other Mexican artists and writers of the late 1950s and 1960s.

Richard Diebenkorn
Woman and Checkerboard exemplifies the figurative abstraction developed by Richard Diebenkorn. It is a definitive example of the artist's early period when he applied an expressive application of paint, inspired by Abstract Expressionism, to new interpretations of the figure. A lone woman is the focal point of this painting. She is articulated by gestural brushwork and saturated planes of color. Enveloped by space, her solitude is reflective of the Existential thinking that shaped many parts of the Americas during the 1950s.