Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz
Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz
Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz is the first major retrospective of one of the most influential Los Angeles artists of the 1970s and 1980s. Arguably the first of the many Chicano artists whose artistic, cultural, and political motivations catalyzed the Chicano art movement in the 1970s, Almaraz began his career with political works for the farm workers’ causa and co-founded the important artist collective Los Four. Although he saw himself as a cultural activist, Almaraz straddled multiple—and often contradictory—identities that drew from divergent cultures and mores, and his art became less political in focus and more personal, psychological, dreamlike, even mythic and mystical as he evolved artistically.
The first to focus predominantly on Almaraz’s large-scale paintings, the exhibition features more than 60 works and includes pastels, ephemera, and notebooks, mostly from 1967 through 1989, the year of the artist’s untimely death at age 48.
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
It is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles.
Major support is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.
Bank of America is the presenting sponsor of Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz.
Generous support provided by AltaMed.
Additional funding provided by Ann Murdy.
All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Kitzia and Richard Goodman, with generous annual funding from Lauren Beck and Kimberly Steward, the Judy and Bernard Briskin Family Foundation, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Jenna and Jason Grosfeld, The Jerry and Kathleen Grundhofer Foundation, David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., Taslimi Foundation, and Lenore and Richard Wayne.
Image: Carlos Almaraz, Crash in Phthalo Green, 1984, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of the 1992 Collectors Committee (AC1992.136.1). © The Carlos Almaraz Estate. Photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA
- Aug 6–Dec 3, 2017
- BCAM, Level 2
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
It is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles.
Major support is provided through grants from the Getty Foundation.
Bank of America is the presenting sponsor of Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz.
Generous support provided by AltaMed.
Additional funding provided by Ann Murdy.
All exhibitions at LACMA are underwritten by the LACMA Exhibition Fund. Major annual support is provided by Kitzia and Richard Goodman, with generous annual funding from Lauren Beck and Kimberly Steward, the Judy and Bernard Briskin Family Foundation, Louise and Brad Edgerton, Edgerton Foundation, Emily and Teddy Greenspan, Jenna and Jason Grosfeld, The Jerry and Kathleen Grundhofer Foundation, David Schwartz Foundation, Inc., Taslimi Foundation, and Lenore and Richard Wayne.
Image: Carlos Almaraz, Crash in Phthalo Green, 1984, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Gift of the 1992 Collectors Committee (AC1992.136.1). © The Carlos Almaraz Estate. Photo © Museum Associates/ LACMA
Media
L.A.-based producer, writer, and activist Dan Guerrero and artist Carlos Almaraz were lifelong friends, from their initial fifth grade schoolyard meeting to the very day Almaraz died of AIDS in 1989. They grew up a block apart on the same East L.A. street, sharing big dreams and a passion for adventure. Almaraz always wanted to be an artist and Guerrero was drawn to the entertainment world early. The two set off for New York City in 1962 to follow their dreams, with Almaraz staying a few months during a break from art school and Guerrero remaining for a successful twenty-year career in musical theatre. Geography did not diminish their brotherly friendship, and upon Guerrero’s return to L.A. in the early 1980s, it matured and deepened.
Guerrero wrote the autobiographical ¡Gaytino! to celebrate both this special friendship as well as his equally profound relationship with his father, renowned singer and composer Lalo Guerrero, recognized as the Father of Chicano Music and a recipient of the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton.
Dan Guerrero has performed his solo show at venues across the country, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. The ¡Gaytino! excerpts featured here focus on Guerrero’s friendship with Almaraz. The full performance can be viewed at www.gaytino.com.
¡Gaytino! videography by Daniel Buckley, editing by Richard Read