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https://www.coleccionbbva.com/es/autor/de-la-garza-javier/
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autor
25746
Javier De la Garza
(Tampico, Tamaulipas, 1954)
Author's artworks
20
th
-21
st
Century Mexican
De la Garza is a virtually self-taught artist, except for occasional classes in printmaking at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas and William Hayter’s
Atelier 17
A printmaking studio founded by Stanley William Hayter (1901-1988). With a BA in Physics and Geology, Hayter is considered one of the most important twentieth-century engravers. Through this studio, which first opened in Paris in 1927, he championed a new approach to engraving, foregrounding artists’ expressive and visual freedom, which allowed them to achieve innovative results in the field of graphic arts. During World War II, Atelier 17 relocated to New York, and moved back to Paris in 1950. Artists who worked there include Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Joan Miró (1893-1983), José Guerrero (1914-1991) Alberto Giacometti (1901- 1966), Yves Tanguy (1900-1955), Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and Mark Rothko (1903-1970).
in Paris.
A leading light in the
Neo-Mexicanism
word that designates the artistic production carried out in México from 1980 that reflects on the symbols of Mexican culture, popular art and the traces of indigenous communities. It appeared as a claim of figurative languages after two decades of abstract expressionism. The main figures os this stile are Nahum B. Zenil (1947), Enrique Guzmán (1952-1986), Germán Venegas (1959) and Francisco Toledo (1940-2019).
movement which emerged in the late 1980s, Javier de la Garza set new aesthetic paradigms that left a deep mark on the passing fashion for nationalistic paraphrasing which was to obsess a large number of young coeval painters. In Javier de la Garza’s work, the kitsch variations of the imaginary which shaped Mexican identity—featured widely in school books, the bolero genre of song and the golden era of local filmmaking—took on an ambiguous quality: a loyalty to nineteenth century academic drawing, a tribute to the sentimentalism of popular prints vilified by the avant-garde, but also a satirical intent through the recovery and contemporary re-contextualisation of an outmoded visual lexicon.
De la Garza enjoyed wide commercial success, selling everything that came from his studio. His most sought-after pieces were those depicting couples consisting of brawny Aztec men and native women with a Hollywood-like sheen, or of Zapatista men or dancers in parodies of Indigenista paintings, commercial calendars by Jesús Helguera (1910-1971) and stills by Gabriel Figueroa (1907-1997) in films by Emilio “El Indio” Fernández.
He has exhibited his work in Mexico, USA and UK and at international art fairs like ARCOmadrid in Spain and Europalia.
Since 2002 Javier de la Garza is a member of Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (national system of art creators), an art association belonging to FONCA (National Endowment for Culture and Arts).
He currently lives in Yautepec, Morelos, where he continues working and exhibiting his oeuvre.