Episode 60 features Candida Alvarez. She is the 2021 recipient of the FCA Helen Frankenthaler award for painting and visual arts. Her works include drawings, paintings, prints, and collages that are created with materials as diverse as acrylic paint, colored pencils, enamel, and embroidery thread on cloth, on various supports ranging from canvas to PVC, cotton napkins to vellum.

Alvarez’s solo exhibitions include Mambomountain, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL (2012); Candida Alvarez: Here, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL (2017); DeColores, GAVLAK, Palm Beach, FL (2019); and Estoy Bien, Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago, IL (2020).

Her many group exhibitions include Brooklyn Museum, NY; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; El Museo del Barrio, New York ; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Queens Museum, NY; and Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA, among others.

Her work is in the collections of El Museo del Barrio, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Addison Gallery of American Art, the DePaul Art Museum, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Prior to her FCA award, Candida received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019), a Regional Fellowship from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (1988), New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship (1986), and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (1994). In 1980, she participated in the International Studio and Workspace Program at MoMA PS1, and in 1985, she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1981) and was a resident artist at MacDowell (1986).

Alvarez received her B.F.A. from Fordham University and her M.F.A. from Yale School of Art. She is the F.H. Sellers Professor in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Candida Alvarez is represented by Monique Meloche, Chicago and GAVLAK Palm Beach/Los Angeles.

Artist website https://www.candidaalvarez.com
https://www.candidaalvarez.com/news

Monique Meloche Gallery https://www.moniquemeloche.com/artists/33-candida-alvarez/works/

Foundation for Contemporary Arts https://www.foundationforcontemporaryarts.org/recipients/candida-alvarez

WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/el-museo-del-barrio-hosts-first-triennial-exhibition-11615325292

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candida_Alvarez

El Museo del Barrio https://www.elmuseo.org/la-trienal/

Art News `https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/breaking-art-industry-news-january-2021-week-4-1234582112/

Hyde Park Art Center https://www.hydeparkart.org/exhibition-archive/candida-alvarez-mambomountain/

The Vision Paintings are in collections around the country including Washington D.C., Seattle, New York, and Chicago. Several of the Vision Paintings are currently on view within the LatinX exhibition at BRICarts, and in “The Long Dream” at the MCA.

Images ~ Courtesy of the artist and Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago.

Vision Painting No. 15, 2020
acrylic on linen
20 x 20

A favorite painting ~ Kerry James Marshall’s ‘Watts’

Vision Painting No. 8, 2020
acrylic on linen
20 x 20

Vision Painting No. 8, 2020 acrylic on linen 20 x 20

Vision Painting: No. 2, 2020
Acrylic on linen
20 x 20 in.

Vision Painting: No. 2, 2020 Acrylic on linen 20 x 20 in.