Royalty - Recent Drawings from Nelson Figueroa

This month we are proud to present the new works on paper of Puerto Rico based artist Nelson Figueroa. Figueroa is currently finishing paperwork to begin his MFA at Brooklyn College in NYC. He graduated from the Escuala de Artes Plasticas in San Juan and had a solo exhibition of his pop paintings at Puerto Rico Fine Arts and collective shows at Liga de Arte de San Juan, Trailer Park Proyects in Puerto Rico and internationally in NYC and at Scope Art Fair in Miami. He is currently working for a show at NYC based Gallery Eachone which will consist of digital drawings.

 

 

“Royalty” is a series mixed media drawings that takes us back to the days of where the painters lived off doing portraits of the rich and famous in order to make a decent living doing what they loved.  Jose Campeche, Francisco Oller, Lopez de Victoria, Juan Rosado, Miguel Pou and most of the Puerto Rican masters had to do this to maintain a social status and a respect level in the high class society of their era. This is a practice that has been part of the art world since the beginning, not only in Puerto Rico but in every country that has had an art scene.

 

 

This series of Royalty portraits depict famous royalty personalities in an expressionist grotesque abstraction that redefines the idea of a commissioned portrait. We can observe Nelson Figueroa’s dark humor. Much alive today this tradition has not faded and members of the high society still commission portraits for their homes. This type of paintings maintain a standard of education, power, intellectuality and a level of culture mixed with a socialite standard which reinforces that the person painted was an “important and well known” member of his era’s society.

 

 

The exhibition will run through October at TPP, We will be participating all week from Oct. 7-11 at Street Festival Los Muros Hablan curated by Alexis Diaz from La Pandilla and organized by Buena Vibra Group, led by Yariely Rodriguez and Nicole Diaz. Check out the website www.losmuroshablan.com and will be exhibit at Artejangueo on October 18^th at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Keep checking for our schedule of the exhibition. We will do our regular stops at la Escuela de Artes Plasticas, UPR Rio Pierdas and Universidad del Sagrado Corzaon art department.