1 2 Inverarte Art Gallery presents Jorge Obregon “Grand Canyon, Zion and Sedona Experience” Opening and Artist Reception, Wednesday, October 17th, 2018 On view October 17th, 2018 through January 9th, 2019 Inverarte Art Gallery 923 N Loop 1604 E Ste 103, San Antonio, TX 78232 Contact +1 210-305-6528 mail: [email protected] Mon - Thu 10:00 to 19:00 Fri - Sat 10:00 to 17:00 www.inverarteartgallery.com Grand Canyon, Zion, and Sedona Experience “Grand Canyon, Zion and Sedona Experience,” this could be the title showed not only the landscape, but they also included the buildings and of an adventure movie or a documentary, but in this case, it is the name of people who populated those places. Therefore those paintings were more this exhibition which consists of 18 paintings made by Jorge Obregon in than artworks but also historical testimonies of the landscape and customs his latest expedition. But looking back at it, why not, it is also the name of of that time. However, it was not until 1855, with the arrival to Mexico of the this catalogue that narrates a little of the history of such excellent artist, as Italian painter Eugenio Landesio, as a landscape and perspective professor well as his participation and relationship with the history of art in Mexico. at the Academy of San Carlos, that landscape painting truly began in Mexico. Moreover, it presents us a movie in slow motion, meaning, frame by frame, Eugenio Landesio had several excellent disciples, but the most outstanding about his adventure through the Colorado Plateau. was Jose Maria Velasco, who was the first Mexican artist to travel all over Mexico making excellent landscapes and later exhibiting them abroad, Jorge Obregon spent two months, June and July of this year, traveling showing Mexico to the world. in his trailer and painting en plein air (is a French expression that means “in the open air.” It is used by artists to describe the art of outdoor painting) the In the early twentieth century, Joaquin Clausell and other contemporary most beautiful views of the Colorado Plateau, an area known as the region artists were the face of Mexican Impressionism, but the most notable of the four corners, covering the boundaries of the states of Colorado, contribution to modern landscape painting in the first half of the twentieth New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona. It is a place where three majestic artworks century was that of Dr. Atl, who after studying at the Academy of San created by nature throughout millions of years, climb to the sky and give Carlos and later in Europe, returned to Mexico to modernize landscape their testimony of the passage of time. The first one is the Grand Canyon, painting from that time. Dr. Atl introduced the first ideas of the synthesized with a length of 277 miles, a width of 18 miles and a depth of over a mile. It landscape, eliminated the traditional perspective to replace it with the has been carved by the Colorado River, layer by layer, throughout millions curvilinear perspective and the superposition of planes, he used a vivid of years, exposing close to 2 billions years of Earth’s geological history. The and vibrant color palette, and created a new technique called Atlcolor, second one is Zion, with a length of 15 miles and a depth of half a mile. It is which is a kind of encaustic based on waxes, pigments and resins that he a formation that represents the sedimentation process of 150 million years. manufactured. Later, Luis Nishizawa who also studied at the Academy of Currently, Zion is crossed by the Virgin River, and hosts an unusual diversity San Carlos, incorporated knowledge and techniques from Japan to his art of vegetation and fauna. Lastly, Sedona, which is characterized by its unique and became the most outstanding landscape painter of the second half formation of red rocks that shine in bright tones of orange and red with of the twentieth century in Mexico. Nishizawa synthesized the landscape the light of every sunrise and sunset. These three places are witnesses of even more, played with the superposition of planes, and took advantage of the formation of Earth and have been the home of Native Americans for the vividness and qualities of color, in order to achieve clean, pure, bright, thousands of years. colorful, and smooth landscapes. Nishizawa, like Dr. Atl, dedicated a large part of his life to perfecting his technique and mastering the use of materials. Jorge Obregon is one of the most notable landscape artists of the For many years Nishizawa taught the course Technique of Materials at the twenty-first century in Mexico. He is heir to the practices, teachings and Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas (National School of Visual Arts), formerly evolution of the Mexican landscape artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, known as the Academy of San Carlos, and now part of the UNAM (National and at the same time he is an explorer of new trends and horizons. He Autonomous University of Mexico). has been the successor of the traveling painters, following the tradition of plein air painting (painting outdoors), traveling through not only his country The tradition of plein air painting has been the common ground between of origin, but several parts of the world. Each artist selects something to nineteenth-century traveling painters, Jose Maria Velasco, Dr. Atl, Luis paint, something that inspires him and what he connects with. In the case of Nishizawa, and now Jorge Obregon, who was one of the main disciples of Obregon, he has selected Mother Earth, looking for places that have been Luis Nishizawa. The style of Jorge Obregon clearly shows the influence of shaped by nature through millions of years to recreate in his paintings. his mentor Luis Nishizawa, in how Obregon synthesizes the landscape, the smoothness of his work, and his color palette. However, it can also be seen Landscape painting in Mexico has its origin with nineteenth century the influence of Dr. Atl on Obregon’s work, one of the artists that Obregon traveling painters. Artists who temporarily traveled from Europe to Mexico, admires. This influence is more noticeable in his aerial views, in how he paints such as Pedro Gualdi, Daniel Thomas Egerton, Johann Moritz Rugendas, the vegetation, and also in his color palette. Finally, in the works that make Carl Nebel, Baron Jean Baptiste-Louis Gros, Frederick Catherwood, August up this exhibition, it is possible to see the influence of the American painter Lohr, Paul Fischer, Conrad Wise Chapman, among others. These artists Christopher Chippendale, with whom Jorge Obregon made contact in 2015. captured the landscapes of Mexico in a realistic style. Their paintings 2 But who better than Jorge Obregon to tell us about his own history, trajectory, expeditions and this exhibition, for which he answers the following questions. When and how did you discover that you liked painting and wanted to be an artist? Since I was a child I liked painting and I have been developing it as an activity that I really enjoy. My parents own an art supplies store, Casa Garies, founded in 1890, where I spent many of my vacations working behind the counter. There I met several artists. Some of the ones that I met and visited their studios were Nicolas Moreno and Ricardo Martinez, from whom I took the advice to study the major of visual arts in the UNAM before thinking of going and studying abroad. Wisely, they told me: “First, know your history and what has been done here in San Carlos and then go and watch other horizons.” I visited the National School of Visual Arts and was amazed by the workshops and what was doing there. At that time I decided to study this profession, and in November of 1990 when I was 18 years old, I enrolled to study. What is your academic education? Upon entering to the National School of Visual Arts at UNAM, the first professor I met was Luis Nishizawa, who was teaching the course of Technique of Materials. I took that course my first and second semester, learning how to mount a canvas on a stretcher, how to prime the canvas, and how to do each of the techniques, from mixing the pigments with each binder to how to apply them. It was the course that has helped me the most and from which I learned all the chemistry of painting. Standing as his student, master Nishizawa once asked me where I had taken the landscape that I had done as an exercise, and my answer was, “From a photo,” he immediately told me, “Do not paint from a photo, go out and paint live,” that phrase that I still remember left me marked to the point that now is the way I work to perceive the landscape. That is how I became friends with master Nishizawa, and later on he invited me to be part of his team of assistants who would travel with him to teach in Guanajuato and Matamoros. In the same way, many times on Saturdays we went to the country to “Paisajear” (to landscape) with him, and from there I learned a lot of plein air painting. From 1994 to 1996 I did my thesis project “Volcanes de Mexico, una Experiencia al Aire Libre” (Volcanoes of Mexico, an Outdoor Adventure), which had the goal of painting all the volcanoes in Mexico, from Veracruz to Nayarit. This project took me two years of traveling through the Mexican Neo-Volcanic Axis in order to realize a study of Space in Landscape.