Installation view of work by Raúl de Nieves, in the 2017 Whitney Biennial
Raúl de Nieves
What does it mean to be an American artist today?
From his basement studio in Ridgewood, Queens, artist Raúl de Nieves creates an epic stained glass mural for the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Born in Mexico, de Nieves immigrated to San Diego at the age of nine and has been living in New York since 2008. “Growing up in Mexico was really magical because I got to see a lot of forms of celebration,” says the artist. “I got to experience death as a really young child. That’s what my work is about: it’s like seeing the facets of happiness and sadness all in one place.”
His commission from the Whitney Museum of American Art gave de Nieves the opportunity to experiment with the tradition of stained glass, and combine this new light-infused installation with existing figurative sculptures. With gaffers tape, paper, and color gels, de Nieves created a narrative that begins with personal struggle and self-doubt, but ends with “a celebration of life.” In reflecting upon his father’s early death and his mother’s courageous decision to move their family to the United States, de Nieves sees the installation as a form of remembrance. “The mural talks about this experience—this journey,” says the artist, “I feel really happy that I could put so much emphasis on this idea of ‘a better tomorrow’ in my artwork.”
Welcome another selection of faves from our January 30SAL Creative Challenge. Day 7 the challenge was to transcribe Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass. A transcription doesn’t have to be a copy, it can be a way to take an element or concept and reimagine it in another form. Some of these images were borrowed from …
The 1930 Look in British Decoration From 1928 to 1930, a very young Francis Bacon worked in London, Paris and Berlin, designing interiors and pieces of furniture. I found a picture of his interior work – just one picture, and what a thrill to see it. When he was 19, his studio in South Kensington …
I know the rain is dreary, especially when our moods are pulled by pandemic, isolation, news. But the rain has rinsed the pollen from the air, and for that I am thankful. In class on Tuesday, Fran O’Neill shared a few of her favorite landscape paintings. She showed the Van Gogh above, one I haven’t …
Writing process Dr Martin Luther King Jr wrote about 450 speeches a year, and delivered somewhere around 2,000 speeches in his lifetime. His most famous works took form over countless iterations and inter-weaving with previous sermons and writings, as well as integrated pieces of feedback from his friends and advisors. Preparations On August 27, 1963, …
Raúl de Nieves
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Raúl de Nieves
What does it mean to be an American artist today?
From his basement studio in Ridgewood, Queens, artist Raúl de Nieves creates an epic stained glass mural for the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Born in Mexico, de Nieves immigrated to San Diego at the age of nine and has been living in New York since 2008. “Growing up in Mexico was really magical because I got to see a lot of forms of celebration,” says the artist. “I got to experience death as a really young child. That’s what my work is about: it’s like seeing the facets of happiness and sadness all in one place.”
His commission from the Whitney Museum of American Art gave de Nieves the opportunity to experiment with the tradition of stained glass, and combine this new light-infused installation with existing figurative sculptures. With gaffers tape, paper, and color gels, de Nieves created a narrative that begins with personal struggle and self-doubt, but ends with “a celebration of life.” In reflecting upon his father’s early death and his mother’s courageous decision to move their family to the United States, de Nieves sees the installation as a form of remembrance. “The mural talks about this experience—this journey,” says the artist, “I feel really happy that I could put so much emphasis on this idea of ‘a better tomorrow’ in my artwork.”
Raúl de Nieves (b. 1983, Michoacán, Mexico) lives and works in New York. Learn more about the artist at: https://art21.org/artist/raul-de-nieves/
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