Gonzalo Fonseca was a fantastic sculptor and also the father of Caio and Bruno Fonseca. Gonzalo Fonseca was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in the year 1911. Fonseca is considered a modernist artist that sculpted in a modernist style but also painted in oils in an impressionist manner.
Fonseca began as an architect before deciding to pursue a career in the arts.
The artist was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Gonzalo Fonseca also was one of the first “green artists” as he used stone and materials that he found from demolished buildings.
The artist kept studies in Manhattan in the States and also in Italy.
Gonzalo Fonseca passed away in 1997.
price range information: Works range from $10,000 to $100,000.
The next few posts we will be covering Fonseca artist family from Uruguay. Caio and Bruno are the sons and Gonzalo Fonseca the father, this post will cover Caio Fonseca.
Caio Fonseca chose to study independently with artists rather than go to college. The artist studied abroad in Europe for more than one decade before beginning to show is work in 1993.
Caio Fonseca was born in New York City in the year 1959.
The artist is part of many prominent collections including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of Art both located in New York City.
Much of the artist’s work is in mixed media using gouache and ink.
Caio Fonseca is based out of New York City.
Price range information: Works range from $25,000 to $200,000.
Here we see a collaboration with publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust Brookfield Properties and Caio Fonseca. Caio was chosen as the main artist and produced many works for this exhibit:
I enjoy the wonderful organic shapes the artist creates in his work. Combined with his vertical lines and repetition of shapes, the artist creates a fantastic combination of movement and color. What an artistic family!
Antonio Llorens was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in the year 1920 and was among the foremost painters of Latin America working in an Abstract style. For his artistic education Llorens attended the Circulo de Bellas Artes located in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Llorens went on to found his own group of Abstract artists of Uruguay.
The artist was also an avid painter of murals completing many public and private works over his lengthy career.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
Antonio Llorens passed away in 1995.
Llorens had a great sense of color but what I appreciate most is his sense of design. He uses shapes we are all familiar with, yet always seems to include some organic shapes to keep the viewers eye interested.
Though it isn’t Op Art, it definitely has some Op Art characteristics as his works often seem to be in motion. His choice of colors used always enhance his bold shapes. Very elegant abstract art that if I were to compare to a modern artist, I would Llorens reminds me of Rex Ray.
Joaquin Torres Garcia was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in the year 1874. He then moved to Spain in 17 years later in 1891. For his artistic education Joaquin Garcia attended the Baixas Academy located in Barcelona, Spain. From an early age Torres knew he wanted to become an artist but didn’t think Uruguay could provide him with a good education so he left to study in Barcelona, Spain.
Worked with famed architect Antonio Gaudi in projects restoring old churches.
Over his career completed several public commissions and murals.
Joaquin Torres Garcia was put on the 1998 5 peso banknote in Peru. Below is an example of the currency.
In the clip below we visit a museum named for the artist located in his hometown of Montevideo, Uruguay.
Garcia is very unique in that many works were destroyed by a fire at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio De Janiero in 1978. At the time a major exhibition was being held for the artist at the museum.
1913 had a book published that explained the causes behind his theories on art. He also started a school this same year to teach his principles, but the school closed to due to bankruptcy the following year.
In 1917 he started working with a new medium, toymaking and the production of toys. In 1920 the artist took off for Paris, France never to return to Barcelona, Spain in his lifetime. The artist would make his way to New York City and then head for Italy to start his toymaking business. The name of his company was the Aladdin Toy Company.
The movement that is most associated with Garcia is contructivism.
The artist would move from Paris back to Uruguay and was celebrated after having been accepted into the celebrity painter role in Europe.
price range information: The artist is in very high demand and in May a work sold at Sotheby’ for $1.4 million dollars. Prices start at $4,000 for the most part.
The artist is known worldwide for her sculptures that she creates with cast bronze and found materials.
She was born in 1958 in Uruguay.
A brief clip showing the artist at Louis Stern Gallery in Los Angeles, California.
Short documentary on the artist.
What I enjoyed most about the clips, what you can’t find in magazines, is the sheer excitement and joy the artist gets when she is talking about her passion for art. Her facial expression of joy is priceless!
The artist is best known for portraying abstract figurative works in both bronze and wood. The artist likes to mix in the theme of flight with the figure. She also uses found and recycled materials in her works. The artist lives and works out of Los Angeles, California. Also lives in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. Raised in Uruguay her father an engineer and mother a home maker. The artist enjoyed drawing and so she studied architecture. She gave up early on architecture as she felt in limited her creativity.
She moved to Spain to study art where she fell in love and got married. She moved to Los Angeles and ended up getting divorced but remained in California.
The artist is included in many public and private collection. Her work is in the Latin Museum of Art in Long Beach, California. The artist is also included in the Long Beach Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montevideo, California. The late film director Billy Wilder commissioned several commissions.
I enjoy her work as its the characters are imagined, but where reality isn’t so stretched and different from that of a human, thus making all the works resonate with the viewer. Its great to see the figures she creates out of found objects.
The artist made a great point about visual artists in one of the interview clips posted above. She thinks sometimes visual artists have trouble explaining their thesis or feelings behind a work. As artists we make what we can’t explain easily.
The artist is more about emotions that she can infuse into her characters. And the smile that she got when talking about using found objects in her artwork. She was fascinated by using the found objects as they were made for an entirely different use, and all of the sudden the objects are used as a layer in her artwork. I found this description to fit my feelings towards artists that use recycled material in their works.
If you like this artist be sure and check out the artist Deborah Butterfield who makes very large works also mixing casting with found objects. Butterfield specializes in making horses rather than the human figure but her works are extraordinary in their originality.
I hope you are inspired to create an artwork using recycled materials!
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