America Martin at TEW Galleries 2022

TEW Galleries is pleased to announce our fifth solo show for America Martin, a prolific Colombian-American artist living and working in Los Angeles. Her show on the 29th of this month is just one of seventy solo shows she’s had over the last twenty years-adding to her ever-growing reputation as someone to be watched and collected.
America says that her favorite things show up in her paintings: the people she’s met, the books she’s read, the sun and beach, the flowers she grows, barking dogs, birds, and campfires. In America’s art, we immediately recognize friendly faces, joyous color, elegant lines, and bold shapes. Her work is made undeniably original by her distinct visual palette and unique pictorial language.
From the Pop Art-like flatness of her backgrounds to forms that have the blocky sensuality of Pre-Colombian art, America mixes and reinterprets a wide range of influences to create her own style. Most striking are references to the French modernists Matisse, Picasso, and Leger, School of Paris artists whose influence still looms large. In fact, that influence has forced subsequent generations of artists to go in other directions to avoid direct comparison. With America’s arrival on the scene, we realize that times have truly changed.
Artists have always drawn inspiration from other artists. In 1865, the French modernist painter Édouard Manet visited Madrid to see the paintings of the great 17th century Spanish master Velázquez in the Prado Museum. Manet came away dramatically influenced by the work he had seen, mainly because his guiding artistic ambition was referencing contemporary culture through art historical tradition.
In their own way, each of the artists I represent shares Manet’s goal-one that I embrace too. As such, their art gives expression to who I am. But it took the powerful works of America Martin to give voice to an overlooked aspect of myself. Her collectors probably feel the same way, for she has created a style that is indelibly her own and yet one that nods knowingly to past masters.
These are the elements that constitute America Martin’s position in the art world and as mentioned earlier, adds to her ever-growing reputation as an artist to watch and collect.
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