The CCCNY bestows the Amelia Peláez Award 2021, its highest recognition in the visual arts, to artist Luis Cruz Azaceta (Havana, 1942), widely recognized as a central figure in the expressionist movement. After leaving Cuba as a teenager in 1960, Azaceta lived in New York, graduated from The School of Visual Arts and began his long career as an artist. Since the late 1970’s his paintings and drawings have been addressing the moral and ethical pulse of this country. Early works focused on urban violence, the Aids epidemic, and racism. His current works relate to the rapid state of change in the world at large – war, terrorism, displacement, identity, and collapsing economies.
Azaceta is a devotee of visual experiment who often develops parallel series in several media at once, combining materials in totally unexpected ways, as with his extended series of photographs mounted on twisted metal stud. Azaceta works constantly and is extremely prolific. For Azaceta, art is a way of facing the world. He recognizes that change is inevitable, and that all of us are implicated by reality and time passing. The world we inhabit is contingent and changing; and chaos is an inherent part of the process. This is the reality we all share and which we all too often ignore.
Azaceta has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally and has been recognized by The Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and The Joan Mitchell Foundation. His work is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum in New york, The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Venezuela, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Monterrey, Mexico, among others.
The award ceremony will be preceded by an introduction by curator, art historian and critic Alejandro Anreus, who will give a panoramic overview of Azaceta’s trajectory and evolution as an artist. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A with the audience via Zoom, with personalities from the art, music, and literary world in attendance.
TO ATTEND, CLICK HERE ON THE SCHEDULED DATE AND TIME:
https://youtu.be/IIv2awj5BIA
To participate in the Q&A via Zoom after the award ceremony, click here:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87811434892
This art event is part of our CreateNYC Language Access Series on Cuban History, Art, and Literature. It will be held in English and Spanish and will be streamed through our YouTube channel.
Image above:
Luis Cruz Azaceta, The Journey, 1986, acrylic on canvas, 123″ x 132″
To watch a brief PBS interview with Luis Cruz Azaceta, click here:
https://video.whyy.org/video/luis-cruz-azaceta-liosz5/
To watch additional clips of the artist and his work, click here:
https://luiscruzazaceta-art.com/bio
Alejandro Anreus was born in Havana, Cuba. His family went into exile in 1970 when he was ten years old. He grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Anreus received his BA in art history from Kean College, where he studied with the eminent social art historian Alan Wallach. He received his MA and PhD from the Graduate Center, CUN
Y.
He was the curator at the Jersey City Museum from 1993-2001. Since September 2001 he has been professor of art history and Latin American/Latino Studies at William Paterson University. He is the author of Orozco in Gringoland, Ben Shahn and the Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (both 2001), co-author and editor of The Social and The Real (2006), Mexican Muralism. A Critical History (2012), and the recent monograph of the A Ver series Luis Cruz Azaceta (2014). His current research project focuses on the artists, critics and exhibitions in the city of Havana during the 1940s. His articles and essays have appeared in Art Journal, Third Text, Encuentro de la cultura cubana, Commonweal and Art Nexus. He has written and lectured on Cuban and Cuban American artists such as Roberto Estopiñán, Rafael Soriano, Carmen Herrera, Guido Llinás, Antonia Eiriz, Luis Cruz Azaceta, María Brito, Arturo Rodríguez, Juana Valdés and Demi.
This event is co-sponsored by Cuba Art NY
And is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
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