Fernando De Szyszlo
Bio
Fernando de Szyszlo is considered the most important Peruvian artist of the second half of the 20th century. Szyszlo was born in Lima, Peru; his mother was Peruvian of Indian-Spanish descent and his father a geographer from Poland. He lived in Paris and Florence from 1948-1955 and then returned to Peru. In 1962 he became a professor of art at Cornell University. In 1965 Yale University named him visiting professor. Szyszlo exhibited in many important venues throughout the world, including: the Venice Biennale; the Sao Paolo Biennale; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Institute, Chicago; and the Rufino Tamayo Museum, in Mexico City. Currently his works can be seen at the Museum of the Americas in Washington D.C.; the Museum of Modern Art of Mexico; The Guggenheim Museum in New York; Museum of Fine Arts of Caracas; Lima Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro; The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul, among many others. He died in his house in Lima in 2017.
Statement
De Szyszlo's work moves between the abstract and the figurative. His paintings show a tendency towards abstract poetics with a surrealist appearance, which weaves totemic references from pre-Columbian cultures, highlighting the lyricism of color, pictorial textures and a singular handling of light. They evoke the stillness, monumentality, and power of pre-Hispanic forms while at the same time suggesting the dynamic and often violent energies of their poetic and spiritual cores. The trend toward decoration is rooted in Szyszlo's appreciation of pre-Hispanic textiles. Whatever the image of a particular work, whether toward the figurative or the abstract, or refusing to make the distinction, the drama beneath Szyszlo's painting is centered on the tensions of physical and spiritual transformation and the rituals of death and the erotic.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
