Meet Eugenio Espinoza

  • Eugenio Espinoza was born in 1950, in San Juan de los Morros, in central Venezuela. From 1966 to 1974, he studied at the Escuela de Artes Plasticas Cristobal Rojas and the Instituto de Diseño Newmann-Ince in Caracas. From 1977 to 1981, he lived in New York where he studied at Pratt Institute, New York University, and the School of Visual Arts.
     
    In 1972, Eugenio Espinoza exhibited cut and folded canvases at the Museo de Bellas Artes and his Impenetrable at Ateneo de Caracas. His later conceptual works includes found objects and photography. In 1985, he represented Venezuela at the Bienal de Sao Paulo.
  • His aesthetic logic could be summed up in an intention: "Tropicalize the grid" a form operating where tropical chaos appropriates of rationality and aesthetic autonomy of geometric abstraction, proposing to rethink the pictorial plane, its container and the relationship with space. The result, a sarcastic abstraction, rural, corrupted by tropical precariousness and Caribbean humor.

  • The coconut is not a concept, it is life; the grid represents the opposite. This tension is a constant preoccupation in my work.

    Eugenio Espinoza (Off the Grid: A Conversation with Eugenio Espinoza)

  • His work is in the permanent collections of Tate Modern, London, U.K.; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; the Fine Arts Museum of Houston, Texas; the Blanton Museum in Austin, Texas; the Perez Art Museum Miami, Florida; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California; the Harn Museum, Gainesville, Florida; Galeria de Arte Nacional, Caracas; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas; and Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Sao Paulo; Museo de Arte Moderna, in Rio de Janeiro; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Bogota; Fundacion Gego, Caracas; The Cisneros Collection, New York; the Cisneros-Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, FL; Tanya Capariles De Brillembourg collection, and several other prestigious private and corporate collections.

     

    In 2017 Eugenio Espinoza won the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Fine Arts for the United States and Canada.  

     

  • Selected Exhibitions

    2019
    Good Blue Day, Piero Atchugarry Gallery, Miami, USA
    2017
    Unlocking Something, Galleria Umberto Di Marino, Naples, Italy
    2016
    Retro/Retrospectiva, 2016-1972, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain
    2015
    Diorama, Blackston, New York, NY, USA
    Unruly Supports: (1970 to 1980), March - August, 2015, Perez Art Museum Miami, USA
    Solo exhibition at Galleria Eduardo Leme, Sao Paulo, Brazil
    2013
    Out of Focus, Alambrico at Prosjektrom Normanns, Stavanger, Norway
    Going Blind Faith, Blackston, New York, NY, USA

     

     

    Museum Collections

    Tate Modern, London, U.K.
    MoMA, New York, NY, USA
    Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas, USA
    Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA, USA
    Fine Arts Museum of Houston, Texas, USA
    Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida, USA
    The Harn, Gainesville, FL, USA
    Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA, USA
    Museo de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil
    Museo de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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