Candida Alvarez (born 1955) is an American artist and professor, known for her paintings and drawings.Voon, Claire
"Chicago Legend Candida Alvarez Finds Comfort—and Reprieve from Trauma—in Abstraction,"
''ARTnews'', March 13, 2020. Retrieved October 10, 2022.Snodgrass, Susan
"Arriving Here: Candida Alvarez,"
''The Seen'', Issue 05, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2022.Waxman, Lori
"Candida Alvarez, Up to Try Anything,"
''Chicago Tribune'', August 3, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2022. Alvarez has exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art,Whitney Museum of American Art
"no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved November 15, 2022.

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution located in Court Square in the Long Island City neighborhood in the borough of Queens, New York City. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, the ...

,Museum of Modern Art
Candida Alvarez
Artists. Retrieved November 14, 2022. Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago,Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
"The Long Dream,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved November 15, 2022. and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston,Glentzer, Molly
"'Outside the Lines' opens up a world of abstraction,'
''Houston Chronicle'', November 8, 2013. Retrieved November 14, 2022. Her work belongs to the public art collections of the Whitney,Whitney Museum of American Art
Candida Alvarez
Collection. Retrieved November 14, 2022.

Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 mil ...

,Art Institute of Chicago
''Mary in the Sky With Diamonds'', Candida Alvarez
Artworks. Retrieved November 14, 2022. San Jose Museum of Art,San Jose Museum of Art
"Evergreen: Art from the Collection,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved November 15, 2022. and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
''Chill'', Candida Alvarez
Collection. Retrieved November 14, 2022. among others. She was named a 2022 US Latinx Artist FellowVelie, Elaine
"15 Latinx Artist Fellows Receive $50K Grants,"
''Hyperallergic'', May 15, 2022. Retrieved November 14, 2022. and has been recognized by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation,Foundation for Contemporary Arts
Candida Alvarez
Recipients. Retrieved November 14, 2022.

Joan Mitchell Foundation Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

Joan Mitchell Foundation
Candida Alvarez
Supported Artists. Retrieved November 14, 2022. and Pollock-Krasner Foundation.Pollock-Krasner Foundation
Candida Alvarez
Artists. Retrieved November 14, 2022. She lives and works in Chicago and

Baroda, Michigan Baroda is a village in Berrien County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 873 at the 2010 census. The village is within Baroda Township. The first white settlers started to arrive in the 1830s and began clearing the land, drai ...

and is a professor of painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Candida Alvarez, F.H. Sellers Professor, Painting and Drawing
Faculty. Retrieved November 15, 2022.

Education and career

Alvarez was born in 1955 in Brooklyn to parents who had arrived from

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

two years earlier. She grew up in a high-rise building in the Farragut Houses public housing project.Barbara A. MacAdam, "Candida Alvarez, Myth, Memory and Old Lace," ''ARTnews'', February 1993, p. 67.Jones, Kellie. "When Painting Stepped Out to Lunch,
''Candida Alvarez: Here. A Visual Reader''
Chicago: The Green Lantern Press. Retrieved November 15, 2022.Foumberg, Jason. "Candida’s Coloring Book," ''Chicago Magazine'', May 2017, p. 43. Alvarez attended

Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...

at Lincoln Center in New York and received a BA in studio art/liberal arts in 1977; she studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1981. In her early career in New York, she worked as a curator at

El Museo del Barrio El Museo del Barrio, often known simply as El Museo (the museum), is a museum at 1230 Fifth Avenue in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is located near the northern end of Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, immediately north of the Museum of the Cit ...

Quiles, Daniel R. "Numbers and Dreams: Candida Alvarez, 1976–1988,
''Candida Alvarez: Here. A Visual Reader''
Chicago: The Green Lantern Press. Retrieved November 15, 2022. and exhibited in group shows at institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, Studio Museum in Harlem (artist residency) and Jamaica Arts Center.Brooklyn Museum
"Recollections: Works on Paper by Candida Alvarez & Vincent D. Smith,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved November 14, 2022.Brenson, Michael

''The New York Times'', January 9, 1987. Retrieved November 14, 2022. During that time, she had solo shows at Exit Art (1985), Queens Museum (1991), and Bronx Museum of the Arts (1992), among others.Queens Museum
History.
Retrieved November 14, 2022.Zimmer, William

''The New York Times'', January 3, 1993. Retrieved November 14, 2022. In 1995, she enrolled at the Yale School of Art, studying with Mel Bochner, Rochelle Feinstein and Howardena Pindell.Myers, Terry R. "Recognize,
''Candida Alvarez: Here. A Visual Reader''
Chicago: The Green Lantern Press. Retrieved November 15, 2022. Her studies there set the stage for the playful form of

abstraction Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process wherein general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real" or " concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An a ...

for which she is known, and culminated in an MFA in 1997. The following year, she accepted a position at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is the F. H. Sellers Professor in Painting, the first Latinx woman to hold that title.Leahy, Brian T
"Candida Alvarez at Monique Meloche Gallery,"
''Artforum'' May/June 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2022. In her later career, Alvarez has been included in major surveys of abstraction ("Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today,"

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1994 in Kansas City, Missouri. With a $5 million annual budget and approximately 75,000 visitors each year, it is Missouri's first and largest contemporary museum. Founders The core of the museum's perm ...

, 2017)Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art". Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
"Magnetic Fields: Expanding American Abstraction, 1960s to Today,"
Exhibitions. Retrieved November 15, 2022. and Latinx art ("Estamos Bien – La Trienal 20/21," El Museo del Barrio, 2021; "Latinx Abstract," BRIC, 2021; "no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria," Whitney Museum, 2022).Passy, Charles
"El Museo del Barrio Hosts First Triennial Exhibition,"
''The Wall Street Journal'', March 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2022.Witt, Bree
"Candida Alvarez Makes Her Mark,"
News, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Retrieved November 15, 2022. She has had solo exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center (2012), Chicago Cultural Center (2017),Chris Miller, Chris
"Painting A Life In Bloom,"
''New City'', July 15, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2022. GAVLAK Gallery (Palm Beach, 2019; Los Angeles, 2021) and Monique Meloche Gallery (Chicago, 2020), among other venues. In 2017, six existing color works by Alvarez were adapted by Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo for her "new camouflage" Comme des Garçons haute couture menswear collection.Marevska, Anna. Comme des Garçons Spring 2017 Men’s Collection Features a Chicago Artist’s Print,"''Fashion Files'', February 1, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2022.

Work and reception

Alvarez reworks both materials and methods in her work, resisting a single visual methodology and disrupting distinctions between abstraction, representation and conceptualism. Her painting synthesizes a wide array of modes: floating color fields, highly structured geometries, subdued figural portraits, text and invisible guiding systems. Critic Susan Snodgrass has described Alvarez’s process as syncretic and belonging "to a strategy of cultural fusion and hybridity that allows passage between different contexts and histories, as does her use of personal narratives and private symbols as markers of identity."

Early work

In the 1980s, Alvarez produced largely representational paintings that drew on her city experiences and Puerto Rican heritage, mixing portraiture, landscape, written words and personal iconography.Fusco, Coco. "Hispanic Artists and Other Slurs," ''The Village Voice'', August 9, 1980, p. 22.Cyphers, Peggy. "Candida Alvarez," ''Arts'', February 1990, p. 100. She often portrayed family members; ''He loved to dream'' (1985) was a mixed-mode work of flat planes, sharp angles and relief imagery depicting her father.Pacheco, Patrick. "The New Faith in Painting," ''Art & Antiques'', May 1991, p. 61–2. Paintings such as the three-panel, altar-piece-like work, ''Sit, Stand & Kneel'' (1986) or ''Soy Boricua (I am Puerto Rican)'' (1989) portrayed passive, dutiful, wary or increasingly powerful female protagonists as they navigated roles and identities. Critics characterized these color- and imagery-laden revelations of self and traditional family life as introspective, moody, emotionally charged and reminiscent of magic realism, naïve art or confessional poetry; ''Arts Magazines Peggy Cyphers likened them to the art of

Marc Chagall Marc Chagall; russian: link=no, Марк Заха́рович Шага́л ; be, Марк Захаравіч Шагал . (born Moishe Shagal; 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist. An early modernist, he was associated with several major ...

and

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

. In subsequent work, Alvarez experimented with new mixed-media materials, textures and multi-panel formats that functioned as both structural and narrative devices. Her solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (1992) and New Britain Museum of American Art (1996) featured multi-image paintings of rudimentary human forms and abstract primal energies that evoked themes of organic or inner growth.Cotter, Holland
"Candida Alvarez, Bronx Museum of the Arts,"
''The New York Times'', December 18, 1992, p. C37. Retrieved November 14, 2022.Zimmer, William

''The New York Times'', June 16, 1996. Retrieved November 14, 2022. ''New York Times'' critic Holland Cotter wrote that the " lyrical, painterly work" charted progress "from darkness to light and from fragmentation to wholeness," drawing strength from its ambiguity regarding the relationships between human figures and natural forces. The panels hinted at sequential, internal passages while also serving as external, quasi-architectural spaces, alluding to the 14th-floor housing-project windows she looked out of as a child (e.g., ''Sisters I'' and ''Sisters 2'', 1992; ''Sixteen Stories'', 1996). This work presaged her later interest in minimalist seriality and

gestural abstraction Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical a ...

Later work

During her time at Yale, Alvarez studied color theory and began experimenting with intuitive processes, puzzles and games, in part influenced by her friendship with the minimalist and

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called inst ...

ist Sol LeWitt. These strategies pushed her work toward abstraction and remixed its clearly autobiographical aspects, while maintaining its attention to process and inspirational roots. Paintings such as ''Tossing Pennies'' (1995), which incorporated pennies and colorful painted orbs as nodes in a connect-the-dots scheme, were determined by chance; in similarly vibrant and graphic works, she used letters and numbers as organizing systems (e.g., ''Louise'' or ''Jimmy'', both 1996). In the 2000s, Alvarez's work has been characterized by a decorative visuality and postmodern versatility that ranges across contemporary styles.Snodgrass, Susan, "Candida Alvarez at TBA," ''Art in America'', May 2003, p. 154.Picard, Caroline
"Center Field, Art in the Middle/Mashed up and Shredded into Space, An Interview with Candida Alvarez,"
''Art21'', January 22, 2013. Retrieved November 14, 2022. Her TBA Exhibition Space show (2005) featured quirky, graffiti-like drawings and large fabric pieces evoking toys, keepsakes and personal history. Drawings such as ''Celia Mia'' (2000–1) juxtaposed floral and geometric patterns, text and playful characters, while the fabric works depicted such figures with bold black shapes and lines stitched in black embroidery floss on curtain-like squares of black cotton. Alvarez's later exhibitions—"Mambomountain" (Hyde Park Art Center, 2012), "Here" (Chicago Cultural Center, 2017), "Estoy Bien" (Monique Meloche Gallery, 2020) and "Palimpsest" (GAVLAK Los Angeles, 2021)—have been more painting-focused.Hyde Park Art Center
Cándida Alvarez: Mambomountain
Exhibitions. Retrieved November 15, 2022.GAVLAK Los Angeles
Candida Alvarez: Palimpsest
Exhibitions. Retrieved November 28, 2022. In monumental works such as ''mary in the sky with diamonds'' (2005), ''arroz amargo'' (2010) and ''hi ho silver'' (2008), she created shifting, layered surfaces packed with textures, ideas and scraps of pop culture.Bui, Phong H
"Candida Alvarez with Phong H. Bui,"
''The Brooklyn Rail'', March 2020. Retrieved November 14, 2022. ''New City'' compared the billowing shapes, sinuous lines and snippets of text of the latter painting to "a cartoon that’s been chopped up in a blender." The "Here" retrospective presented nearly sixty works spanning forty years. The show was achronolgically arranged to create connections, and united by "camouflage" baseboard molding running throughout that derived from the work used in her Comme des Garçons collaboration. New works included subtle plays between inside and outside, felt and seen (e.g., ''Listening to Haruki Murakami while looking at a sunset'', 2016) and whimsical challenges to the rigidity and authority of the modernist grid. Examples of the latter included ''Remembering Sol LeWitt'' (2016)—which combined a predictable checkerboard, a casually meandering web, gold glitter and scripted text—and the spatially disorienting ''Rainbows on my Studio Floor'' (2016), a receding, slightly askew pattern of saturated parallelograms based the exhibition space's tiled floor. The "Estoy Bien" ("I'm fine") exhibition featured large, double-sided "Air Paintings" that employed multiple visual idioms and referenced loss (her father's recent death), seasonal cycles and the effects of climate change—in particular, Puerto Rico’s devastation by

Hurricane Maria Hurricane Maria was a deadly Category 5 hurricane that devastated the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly Dominica, Saint Croix, and Puerto Rico. It is regarded as the worst natural disaster in recorded history to affec ...

. The paintings were made of partly translucent PVC-mesh material and suspended from freestanding aluminum frames. She created them by printing collages of digitally manipulated images from her studio practice onto the mesh, which she then modified with gestural applications of latex ink, glitter and paint and painted fields of geometric and camouflage-like forms (e.g., ''Here to There'', 2018). The show's title painting, ''Estoy Bien'', a vibrant, pastel-colored work featuring abstract splashes of coral, aqua blue and white paint, inspired the name and theme of El Museo del Barrio's first-ever national survey of contemporary Latinx work—the largest in its history—"Estamos Bien — La Trienal 20/21."Davis-Marks, Isis
"How a Sweeping Survey in NYC Redefines What It Means to Make ‘Latinx’ Art,"
''Smithsonian Magazine'', March 26, 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2022.Martinez, Nicole
"10 Latin American Artists to Watch at El Museo del Barrio’s Triennial,"
''Artsy'', May 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2022. ''New York Times'' critic Holland Cotter described Alvarez's title as complex and "tinged with irony, the words suggest ngboth resilience and bitterness";Cotter, Holland
"El Museo Looks to Define 'Latinx Art' With a Major Survey,"
''The New York Times'', March 25, 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2022. the museum called it "a declaration of defiant resilience and a provocation, conflating a sarcastic and a positive tone."DeGregorio, Erin
"El Museo del Barrio Reopens with National Survey of Latinx Art,"
''Red Hook Star-Revue'', March 14, 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2022. The exhibition (which included Alvarez) confronted systems of power and examined identity, structural racism, migration, displacement, climate and ecological justice through the work of 42 artists and collectives.Colón, Beatriz
"El Museo del Barrio inaugurates the first national Latinx art exhibition in its history,"
''Al Día'', February 24, 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2022.Calderón, Barbara
"Veering From the Didactic to the Lyrical, El Museo del Barrio’s Worthy New Triennial Defines Latinx Art Through a Common Struggle,"
''Artnet'', March 19, 2021. Retrieved November 14, 2022. In the "Palimpsest" paintings (2021), Alvarez employed a similar process to her "Air Paintings," scanning and printing drawings—in this case, on one-sided canvases—then applying successive transparent layers that effaced and intermingled with the initial images, creating complex records of action and time.

Awards and recognition

In 2022, Alvarez was named a US Latinx Artist Fellow ( Ford Foundation and Mellon Foundation) and received an Arts and Letters award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.American Academy of Arts and Letters
"2022 Art Award Winners."
Retrieved November 15, 2022. She has also been recognized by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation (2021),

(2019), International Artists' Studio Program (Stockholm, 1999), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1994), Mid-Atlantic-NEA Regional Fellowship (1988) and New York Foundation for the Arts (1986).NYC Percent for Art
Candida Alvarez
Projects. Retrieved November 15, 2022. She has been awarded artist residencies by the LUMA Foundation (Arles), MacDowell Colony, MoMA PS1, Pilchuck Glass School and the Studio Museum in Harlem.MacDowell
Candida Alvarez
Artists. Retrieved November 14, 2022.''Artforum''
"Studio Museum in Harlem Announces 2021–22 Artists in Residence,"
''Artforum'', October 20, 2021. Retrieved November 15, 2022. Alvarez's work belongs to public art collections including the Addison Gallery of American Art,Addison Gallery of American Art
Candida Alvarez, ''Breast, Navel, Eye''
Collection. Retrieved November 14, 2022. Art Institute of Chicago, Baltimore Museum of Art,Baltimore Museum of Art
Candida Alvarez
Collection. Retrieved November 15, 2022. Blanton Museum of Art,Blanton Museum of Art
''Nueva York'', Candida Alvarez
Objects. Retrieved November 14, 2022.

Brandywine Workshop and Archives The Brandywine Workshop and Archives (BWA) is a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania created to produce limited-edition screen-printed fine art. History BWA was founded by Allan L. Edmunds in 1972 as the Brandywine Graphic Works ...

,Brandywine Workshop and Archives
Candida Alvarez
Collections. Retrieved November 14, 2022. DePaul Art Museum,DePaul Art Museum
'' Son So & So'', Candida Alvarez
Collection. Retrieved November 14, 2022. El Museo Del Barrio, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Pérez Art Museum Miami, San Jose Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem,Studio Museum in Harlem
Candida Alvarez
Collections. Retrieved November 14, 2022. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Whitney Museum, among others. She has also received and completed three public art commissions. These include ''What do you See?'', a set of six stained glass windows created for the P.S. 306 (public school) in the Bronx; the MTA Arts & Design project, ''B is for Birds in the Bronx'' (2006), faceted glass windscreens installed at the New York's Bronx Park East station;MTA Arts & Design
''B is for Birds in the Bronx'', Candida Alvarez
Collection. Retrieved November 15, 2022. and ''Howlings—Soft Paintings'' (2017), a latex-on-PVC mural installed on the banks of the

Chicago River The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center (the Chicago Loop). Though not especially long, the river is notable because it is one of the reasons for ...

as a part of Chicago's Year of Public Art.

Education and career

Work and reception

Early work

Later work

Awards and recognition

References

External links