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RESUME
Mexico City 1964 |
| 2008 |
Art criticism. El Taller el relicario. By Master Teresa Olabuenaga
Mexico City.
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2003 - 2005
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Painting Techniques
Vincent Van Gogh Academy, Mexico City
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| 1998 |
Fresco Painting
Diego Rivera Mural Museum, Mexico City
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| 1996 – 2001 |
Courses in Visual Arts National School of Visual Arts
San Carlos Academy, Mexico City
Artistic anatomy, Lithography, Engraving, Academic Drawing
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| 1995 – 1996 |
Painting Technics and Materials
Luis Nishizawa Museum, Toluca, Mexico
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SOLO EXHIBITS |
| 2010 |
Union Congress, Mexico City "Offerings to my Mother" |
| 2007 |
Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Museum, Mexico City
"Offerings to Ana María García Valseca Laux" (Calligraphic privateness) |
| 2007 |
Heineman Myers Art Gallery Bethesda Maryland U.S.A.
"Offerings to my Mother" |
| 2007 |
Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library Washington D.C. U.S.A.
"Mandalas" |
| 2006 |
Mexican Cultural Institute. San Francisco, CA
"The Psalms" |
| 2006 |
Mexican Cultural Institute. Miami, FL
"The Psalms" |
| 2005 |
ESECA. UNAM. Ottawa, Canada
”THE PSALMS" |
| 2004 |
Panama Embassy, Mexico City
“Lithography Mitologia Kuna” |
| 2004 |
Union Congress, Mexico City
“Lithography Mythologies Kuna” |
| 2003 |
Miguel Cabrera Gallery, Oaxaca, Mexico
“Lithography Mythologies Kuna” |
| 2001 |
Quinta Colorada Room, Chapultepec
, Mexico City
“Trip to Nepal” |
| 1996 |
Santo Domingo’s Institute of Cultures,
Oaxaca, Mexico.
“Spirit’s Voices” |
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GROUP EXHIBITIONS |
| 2009 |
Exhibit hall Medical Center Siglo XXI Mexico City "SOMAAP Salon" |
| 2004 |
Academia de San Carlos, Ciudad de Mexico
“Lithography” |
| 2003 |
Mexico City Museum
“Artist in Residence” |
| 2003 |
Café Tamayo Gallery, Mexico City
“Tribute to the Master Leo Acosta” |
| 1998 |
San Carlos Academy, Mexico City
“Men, Figure, Function and Mystery” |
| 1996 |
Rufino Tamayo Museum, Mexico City
Contemporary Museum of Art, Oaxaca, Mexico
VIII Biennale Rufino Tamayo |
| 1989 |
French Embassy, Mexico City, Mexico City
Selected Works, Commeration of the French Revolution Bicentenial |
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AWARDS |
| 2007 |
Diploma of excellence
Artoteque London England
Global annual competition |
| 1996 |
Selected Works, 8th Biennile, Rufino Tamayo,
Mexico city |
| 1989 |
Selected Works, Art National Contest
Organized by the French embassy |
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PUBLIC COLLECTIONS |
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Iberoamericana University Santa Fe Campus, México City |
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Museo de los Pintores, Oaxaca –Mexico |
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Contemporary Art Museum of Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Mexico |
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Nuevo León Monterrey Art Center, Monterrey, México |
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PRIVATE COLLECTIONS |
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The World Bank Washington DC |
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Panama Embassy, Mexico City, Mexico |
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Mexican Embassy, Berlin, Germany |
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The International Bank of Miami, Miami, Florida |
A SEARCH TOWARDS THE ABSOLUTE IN GERARDO BRAVO’S ART
BY BERTA TARACENA
Since his beginnings in 1978, and more distinctly so nowadays, Gerardo Bravo has sought to poetically merge the sacred and the profane times, as he is one of those artists who believes that the new century will bring about a balance between current dynamics and automatisms and the deep domains that reveal the unchanging and essential components not only of the human being but of planet Earth as a whole.
Born in Mexico City, and educated both at the old San Carlos School (ENAP) and at Maestro Luis Nizhizawa’ s studio and at other classrooms, Gerardo Bravo nurtures a transcendent and mystic hope, which is inspired by the specific cultural background of things Mexican rooted on very meaningful metaphysical concepts that date back from pre-Hispanic times.
Using classical and revolutionary symbols, Gerardo Bravo likes to work with new materials that because of its make-up and structure will make it easier for him to synthesize notions of the sublime and the earthly.
As an enthusiast of traveling and watching the world, Gerardo Bravo´ s visual language progressively redefines a message of a deep poetic significance teeming with extremely refined and carefully elaborate forms. In a major series such as Voices from the Spirit 1996; Icons 2001; Trip to Nepal 2001; and his most recent one, Psalms 2005, the artist shows mastery of the science of proportions and of a well understood content, as well as an impulse towards the sacred, as he combines these elements with the stern simplicity that characterizes him, to create the current splendor of jewel-like carved forms and the spiritual meaning of his planes.
Underlying his pre-Hispanic notions, the artist priest Gerardo Bravo persists in being the master of his own fantasy as he transforms common daily events into a luminous body of profound life. As a tireless researcher of form and content, the painter is part of a universal trend of artists that have set aside hackneyed, lackluster images in a bid to uncover new contours and voices. Described as an artist marked by his impulse towards the transcendent and his ongoing quest towards the absolute, Bravo is the author of a splendid series of works whose forms have been developed in a sequential manner as paradises and purgatories, as depicted in the works of his great series David’s Psalms (done from 2000 to 2005); Blessed Be the Lord; How Many Are My Enemies; Against a Lying World; We Shall Go to the House of the Lord; Beginnings of the Sacred History; Two Kingdoms; The Just Does Not Get Scared; The Lord is My Shepherd; and other examples in which the artist uses color, golden leaves, cloth and wood to convey his ideas.
This rough, slow and patient work done through multiple stages and infinite variations have culminated in a bright and eloquent language that arises from his recent works. These works of a dense and vibrant form have blended with content to form a solid core. The smooth polish of every detail largely accounts for its radiant glow, as it provides the Psalms and other series with the magic aura yearned for by the painter.
THE POETIC LANGUAGE
Thus, Gerardo Bravo has been developing his own language throughout the major stages of his career. At each stage, he observes and reflects the various qualities of the materials, as he handles them and provides them with a rhythm in order to express ideas and sentiments in line with his fundamental pursuit of unraveling the primary and transcendent things. In this context, we need to discuss Bravo´ s work based on a creative principle that expands itself freely, and without following any mottos, as it evolves within the coordinates of a time and space that is directed by him. To be sure, this is why Bravo considers himself in a way a self-directed artist, and has written a paper to expand on his view about what he calls “calligraphic privateness,” where the term “privateness” derives from the quality or state of being private, individual or own.
Also from its inception, Bravo´ s work is aesthetics of semiotics that lends itself to free interpretation by the observer, as it accommodates both the affirmation of the positive and the dilemma of non-existence.
Sign, color, and structure all combine with the artful mastery of his recent works to produce symbolic icons of exciting reading, and beautiful and terse visual effects. In the syntax of this iconology there are no constant or obsessive themes; it is perhaps just the symbolic nature of the unknown that may be found in the expected answer to the enigma or certainty or hope that makes Gerardo Bravo´ s aesthetics so valuable and fascinating.
For now, reading his works at various levels from surface to depth, from top to bottom, from west to east, from right to left or from the proposed perspective of the beholder, his art gives you an insight into what this artist will still be pursuing – his search towards the transcendent and the absolute.
BERTA TARACENA HISTORIAN AND ART CRITIC |
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