Indigo Arts | News | Oaxaca 2006

Modesto Bernardo is inspired by the village life and the forceful Tehuana women of the Isthmus . HIs black and white linocut prints manage to be at once heroic and unsentimental Born in the village of Zimatlan de Alvarez in 1963, Modesto studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes as well as with Shinzaburo Takeda at the Taller de Artes Rufino Tamayo. His work has been exhibited in France, Japan, and in Florida, Arizona, Texas and California in the U.S.

Enrique Flores Gonzalez was born in 1963 in the village of Huitzo. He studied painting and printmaking under Juan Alcazar at the Taller Libre de Grafica, in Oaxaca. He has participated in group shows in Mexico, El Salvador, San Diego, Missoula, Philadelphia, as well as many solo shows in Mexico, Japan and the United States. In 1990 his work was included in a group show of Oaxaca artists, Life, Legend and Dreams, which opened at the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson and toured to the Heard Museum in Phoenix, as well to California. His work is in such public collections as the University of Arizona Art Museum and the Nelson Center for the Arts at Arizona State University. He illustrated the 1995 book, The Harvest Birds, for Children’s Book Press.

Alone among this group of artists, Abelardo Lopez, born in 1957, depicts the landscape of Oaxaca in his paintings and prints. Lopez studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes of the Benito Juarez University in Oaxaca and was a founding member of the Taller de Artes Rufino Tamayo. His work was included in the show “Seven Artists from Oaxaca” at the Museum of Latin American Art in Washington D.C., as well as shows throughout Mexico.

José Eddie Martinez is from Juchitan in the hot, lowland Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, where he was born in 1963. He studied at the Taller de Artes Plasticas Rufino Tamayo under Roberto Donis, and continued his studies with Juan Alcazar at the Taller Libre de la Grafica Oaxaquena. Eddie Martinez’s enigmatic and often dark prints and paintings have been featured in several solo shows in Oaxaca, as well as group shows in both the United States and Mexico, such as the touring Life, Legend and Dreams show in 1990. His work is included in such public collections as the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Latino Americano in Uruguay, and the Nelson Center for the Arts at Arizona State Univesity.

Leovigildo Martinez was born in the city of Oaxaca in 1959. He began his studies in 1977 at the Centro de Educacion Artistico de Oaxaca, and studied at the Taller de Artes Rufino Tamayo as well. He has been included in a number of group shows since 1977, including the Life, Legends and Dreams show. A visit to California in 1987 led to a series of solo shows in Los Altos, Santa Clara and San Francisco. More recently he has illustrated children’s books, including The Twenty-five Mixtec Cats, and The Moon Was at a Fiesta by Matthew Gollub. The Cafe Pasqual’s Cookbook featured the murals he painted in that celebrated Santa Fe restaurant.
No biographical information was available for artist Lorena Montes at this writing.

Felipe Morales was born in 1959 near Ocotlan, Oaxaca. A self-taught artist, he later studied at the Taller de Artes Plasticas Rufino Tamayo. He works in ceramics as well as painting and print-making. His exhibitions have included Cuatro Artistas de Oaxaca, at the Museo Carillo Gil, Mexico City (1983), Contemporary Art of Mexico, Mexican Fine Art Center Museum, Chicago (1988), Oaxaca, Magia en Mexico (1993), Myth and Magic - Oaxaca, Past and Present (1994), at the Palo Alto Cultural Center, Felipe Morales - Uno de Oaxaca (2004), in Brownsville, Texas, as well as many solo exhibitions in Oaxaca.
Fernando Olivera was born in the city of Oaxaca in 1962. He studied art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes at the Benito Juarez University in Oaxaca. He went on to study lithography with Japanese print-maker Shinzaburo Takeda at the Taller de Artes Rufino Tamayo. In addition to many solo shows in Mexico, Olivera has participated in group shows in Mexico City, El Salvador, Montana, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Chicago and Philadelphia (including seven group or solo shows at Indigo Arts). He illustrated the children’s book, The Woman Who Outshone the Sun, based on a Mixtec folk tale, published by Children’s Book Press in California. Olivera’s work was included in the 1994 show Myth & Magic: Oaxaca Past and Present organized by the Palo Alto Cultural Center, as well as the book of the same name. This show is currently on view at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago. His work was also included in The Tree is Older than You Are, a 1995 collection of Mexican poems and stories published by Simon and Schuster.

Olivera’s vision is grounded in the traditional life of Oaxaca and the myths and legends of its people. In works such as “Lagarto”, “El Viento nos Llevara” and “Tarde de Mayo” (Afternoon in May), the everyday seems to merge seamlessly with the mythical and even surreal. Like Frida Kahlo before him, Olivera is inspired by the legendary Tehuana women of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and features them in many of these works. Olivera’s work also reflects his social and political concerns. Over the years he has returned repeatedly to the peasant struggles in the Tehuana city of Juchitan, in such works as “Mujer de las Desaparecidos”(Woman of the Disappeared). For the last decade much of his work has been preoccupied with the uprising in the southern state of Chiapas, led by the Zapatista Liberation Front. In “Jaguar de Luz” and “Los Ojos de la Selva” (The eyes of the forest) we see masked Zapatistas peering out of the forest. In “Requiem por los Caidos”, a Tehuana-dressed angel mourns for those who died in the conflict.

Filemon Santiago, was born in San José Sosala, Oaxaca in 1959. A self- taught artist, Santiago exhibited his work widely in Mexico before moving to the United States in the late 70’s. He lived and worked for 12 years in Chicago before returning to his native Oaxaca. During thise years he showed his work in Washington DC, New York, Rotterdam, Holland as well as galleries and museums in Chicago. His work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in Washington, DC, the Illinois State Museum, and the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, as well as major corporate collections.

Indigo Arts is a Gallery of Ethnographic, Folk and Contemporary Arts from Asia, Africa, and the Americas, located at 151 North 3rd St. (Second Floor) in Old City, Philadelphia, 19106.