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This gallery show which encompassed
Alpuy's travel sketches in Europe (Rome, Venice, Paris), studio
watercolors from Caracas and Bogotá and fifteen impressions
from Buenos Aires complemented the retrospective:
Journeys of Julio Alpuy, that was on exhibit at the Sidney
Mishkin Gallery of Baruch College, City University of New York.
"... The 45 paintings and sculptures presented ...
trace his journeys, both visual and geographic, from
the defining grids characteristic of works from his days
as a student and then a teacher at El Taller to the implied
verticals and horizontals of Alpuy's narratives after his
move to New York City in 1961. Alpuy's long journey from
Montevideo to New York included travels through Latin America,
Europe, and the Middle East during the 1950s as he refined his
own variation of Constructivism. These international travels
helped to establish the universal language of landscapes,
figures, and objects central to his visionary abstractions.
A series of legendary narratives based on the story of Genesis
demonstrate the originality of Alpuy's visual constructions.
Alpuy merits serious independent consideration both for his
importance as a teacher within the circle of artists linked to
Torres-García and for his development as a visionary artist of
great power and insight." - excerpted from the catalogue essay by
Sandra Kraskin, Director, Sidney Mishkin Gallery
"In the past few months New Yorkers have been given
an unusual opportunity to reassess, or even familiarize
themselves with the work and influence of Joaquín Torres-García.
Journeys of Julio Alpuy is the first major exhibition in many years
of art by Alpuy, and the paintings and sculpture, arranged
chronologically, reveal a definite evolution. ...paintings
sometimes lose their overriding grid altogether, and in the
1980s he exhibits a personal figurative style based on his
own variations of archetypal images... His reliefs, such as
Genesis I often take on an almost painterly appearance.
His sculptures in the round like Spirit of Life, present both
simple monumentalized forms and exacting minute details.
It is in works like these that he manages to not merely imitate
Torres-García's example, but rather to assimilate it into his own visual language."
- excerpted from John Angeline's review, Art Nexus, January, 1998
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