Spratling’s designs showcased at YAM, 
Dec 1, 2006

Designs by William Spratling Saturday, December 9, 7–9pm, YAM Gallery Ancha de San Antonio 20

In 1926, a brilliant young American architect, adventurer and designer named William Spratling visited the National University of Mexico to lecture on Spanish colonial architecture. It was a propitious event that forever changed the course of Spratling’s life. He fell in love with Mexico and studied its art, archeology and pre-Columbian past.

In 1929, he settled in Taxco, a sleepy village where silver had once been mined. Spratling saw the potential of Taxco and embraced it with his vision. It was the beginning of an extraordinary adventure. 

Spratling’s vision was to design and create jewelry and objects that synthesized pre-Columbian motifs with Art Deco modernism. His elegant and simple drawings were translated by his artisans into a multitude of designs that possessed a rare and singular beauty.

After Spratling’s untimely death in 1967, new generations of artisans, guided by Maestro Don Tomás Vega, carry on the legacy of producing exquisite and singular pieces. They continue to utilize the same methods, materials and molds that were used over 50 years ago. It is these hand-crafted pieces that have defined the Spratling style. Today, objects bearing the Spratling logo are coveted by a growing number of museums and collectors.

The father of contemporary Mexican silver

From www.spratlingsilver.com 

An innovative and talented designer of Mexican jewelry, silver hollow-ware, tin, copper, and furniture, William Spratling demonstrated his appreciation for, and sensitivity to, the early cultures of Mexico.

He established a model for the artistic development and growth of the silver industry in Taxco and well deserved the title “Father of Contemporary Mexican Silver.”

William Spratling quickly made many friends in the literary, political and artistic worlds of Mexico. The summers he spent in Mexico during 1926, 1927, and 1928 enabled him to establish many contacts among the then current “movers and shakers.” Spratling moved to Mexico in 1929 to write his book Little Mexico. When Dwight Morrow, US Ambassador to Mexico, mentioned to Spratling that he wanted to make a personal “nonpolitical” gift to the city of Cuernavaca, Spratling suggested that his friend Diego Rivera might be persuaded to create frescoes in the Cortés Palace in Cuernavaca. For helping to arrange this transaction, Spratling received two thousand dollars, which he immediately used to purchase a house in the Calle de las Delicias in Taxco. 

Early in 1931, Dwight Morrow remarked to Spratling, “What a pity, Bill, that of all the thousands of tons of silver sent back from Taxco to the Old World over the centuries, that none of this ever stayed here or was utilized to create an industry or economy for Taxco.”

New information suggests that, contrary to Spratling’s account in his autobiography, File on Spratling, his silver designs were not the major offering in his earliest shop, La Aduana. 

(Throughout his life, Spratling had financial crises, and at this period, in 1931, his need to create income to cover his minimal living expenses was serious.) 

La Aduana opened June 27, 1931, and initially the main focus was probably tinware, copper, weavings and furniture, and, to a slighly lesser extent, silver—all designed by Spratling. Silver jewelry and silver objects designed by Spratling became the primary focus of his shop by 1933. The shop, with its weavers, copper- and tinsmiths and silversmiths, Spratling later said, was “a four-ring circus.” 

For more information, see www.spratlingsilver.com 

Krauze exhibits at Kunsthaus Santa Fe

“Registros” by Perla Krauze Saturday, December 9, 7pm, Kunsthaus Santa Fe Santa Fe 22A, Colonia Allende

Mexican artist Perla Krauze exhibits her work for the first time in San Miguel de Allende at Kunsthaus Santa Fe. Krauze’s work is recognized internationally, and she has won several grants from the Sistema Nacional de Creadores in Mexico. Her work has been selected four times for the Biennial of Monterrey and for the Rufino Tamayo Biennial, at the most recent of which she was awarded a prize. She also garnered the Annual Painting Award from the INBA (National Institute of Fine Arts) in 1989. She has exhibited in Europe and America in biennials and important collective exhibitions.

In this show at Kunsthaus Santa Fe, Krauze gathers into the exhibit space a combination of paintings, sculpture, installations and photography. Some of her images are reflections of the space itself, including close-ups of the gallery floor or the roughness of the concrete wall.

Besides these works created using the landscape of the gallery itself, the exhibit also includes other pieces such as large stones and resin cubes, monuments that speak to the nature of duality and artificiality and the ephemeral quality of all materials.

The exhibit is open until February 1, 2007. 

Linear gestures, luminous color
By Beryl Silverthorne

Paintings by Beryl Silverthorne Friday, December 8, 6–8pm, Instituto Allende, Salon 5 Ancha de San Antonio 20

Just walking onto the Instituto Allende grounds inspires me: the gardens, the architecture, the views. I am enveloped in the sense of another time, and I plan to paint there in Salón 5 through December. To find Salón 5, use the old entrance, cross the main patio, and look to the right of the new café.

Painting is such a direct form of expression that I hesitate to translate the experience into words. Nevertheless, my artist’s statement follows.

My paintings are landscapes of visual sensations; abstractions of what I see and feel in the natural environment. I am enchanted by rain and sunlight filtered through fog, translated into the language of color, gesture, form and space. My joy while painting is as direct as hearing music. The expression “oir la pintura, ver la musica” may sum up a lot for me.

I use acrylic paint for emotional impact. At times meditative, I like to pay attention to edges and tone, and to areas that float in space. Most often, brilliant color contrasts express my delight in working with color. In the very act of painting, I feel transported by the flood of energy of the process. Working wet to wet, I can lose myself in a cool, linear gesture drawn on top of a hot, wet, luminous area of color.

I want to risk forgetting all that I know. At heart, my best work is pure intuition and just taking advantage of what happens when I put the paint down on the canvas.

Erika Kahn intaglios at Mero Arte Contemporáneo

Intaglios by Erika Kahn Saturday, December 2, 7pm, Mero Arte Contemporáneo Zacateros 24

Mero Arte Contemporáneo, formerly known as Galería Wey, is proud to announce its next exhibition, intaglios by master printmaker Erika Kahn. This highly original and mature artist was born and raised in Berlin but educated in the United States, culminating her artistic education with a master’s degree in printmaking from California State University at Long Beach. She has had a long and successful career with extensive representation in various parts of the US and Europe, and her work is in important corporate and private collections worldwide. 

The inspiration for much of Kahn’s work comes from the Orient. She believes that it is in her soul to follow an Eastern path. Her work has often been described as “soft landscape,” meaning that it possesses a calm, peaceful quality related to the oriental aesthetic. She has been particularly influenced by horizontal Chinese landscape scrolls, which are meters long with narrative content. One can see this influence in her horizontal, multipaneled works such as “California Mountains” and “California Suite.” Her images are exquisite, delicate and precise meditations on universal themes. They are also masterful realizations of the process of intaglio printing, which requires working in many layers on a single plate to create depth in terms of the drawing and the way the plate accepts the ink. 

Because of the long, slow printing process, Kahn produces an average of two sets of etchings a year, working in sections with varying numbers of plates. The technique is complicated and demands both patience and finesse. The results are sublime.

The quality of the work, from the paper to the oil-based ink to the layered etchings, is of the highest level. The intaglios in this exhibition are considered “multi-originals,” in that each one is slightly different because they are printed one by one. 

The objective of Mero Arte Contemporáneo is to promote the work of artists with a unique personal vision, firm in the belief that not only are originality and beauty still possible in a post-postmodern world, they are the most important elements of creative expression.

Collected works of Gerardo Ruiz

“Figuración Geométrica” by Gerardo Ruiz Maldonado Tuesday, December 5, 6–8pm, Gallery RaLuz Plaza Principal 2

Gallery RaLuz presents works by painter, sculptor and master etcher Gerardo Ruiz Maldonado. The exhibit includes a range of work executed using a variety of techniques, such as etching on metal and linoleum, monoprints and mixographs, which combine printing and painting.

The exhibit offers the viewer a fusion between figural representations and geometric or rhythmic elements, a style integral to Ruiz’s work. Figures are refined to their core elements yet retain their expressiveness, winding into fields of tones, contrasts and textures. A classic form is thereby deconstructed, creating new interpretations of the nude, among other figures.

To see more of Gerardo Ruiz’s work, visit his website at www.gerardoruizart.com 

Landscapes by Silvia Velásquez at El Petit

Paintings by Silvia Velásquez El Petit Bar, Hernández Macías 95 Through December

Silvia Velásquez has lived and painted in San Miguel since 1991, although a great part of her work has consisted of finding lonely, open-air places, surrounded by water, wind or birds, to paint the landscapes that are a basic part of her work. 

Always searching out quiet places untouched by human intervention, she traveled at the beginning of this year to the coast of Oaxaca, where she found a small bay with crystal-clear water and large rocks between Huatulco and Puerto Ángel. There, she worked on a series of oil paintings, some of them representing rocks in grey and blue tones, lending a melancholy atmosphere. Besides living in San Miguel, Velásquez spends time painting in France and Italy. She has shown her work in Mexico, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Zaire, Canada and Japan.

This series of landscapes will be on exhibit at El Petit Bar beginning Thursday, November 30, and will be on display during the whole month of December, along with an exhibit of ceramics by Angelina Pérez Ibargüen.