(L) Mexican Girls by Gustavo Montoya. (R) Jack Rutberg Gallery at opening reception (Photos – Garrett Rowlan)
The Hispanic Legacy collection at the Jack Rutberg Gallery, on Lake and California in Pasadena, reminds me of the line from Sunset Boulevard, “We didn’t need dialogue, we had faces.”
By Garrett Rowlan
The line seemed to jump out as I patrolled the gallery. Faces, or more exactly eyes, stared out from the doe-eyed and dual-featured young girls (Twins? A soul and its shadow?) from “Mexican Girls” by Gustavo Montoya (1905-2003); while on the opposite wall the expression of the young woman in the work by Francisco Zuniga (1912-1998) is adult and complicated as suggested by the work’s title, “Young Woman at the Threshold.” In “The Hairdresser” by Rafael Corona (1932-2019) the face that returns our stare has an urbane ambiguity that suggests a complication from a less tolerant era.
But an era more tolerant to language than these digital times, “To Form a Seven-Letter Word” by Jordi Alcaraz (b, 1963) has seven sprout-like tendrils rise from the frame’s bottom like saplings, as if the word itself were born, breaking the shell of a nameless object being at last granted its identity.
Alcaraz’s work complements the surrealist element in the nearby work of Roberto Matta (1911-2002) whose color etchings have a cartoonish vivacity, with amorphous figures suggesting bacteria magnified by a microscope.
Surrealism is also represented by its well-known practitioner if not inventor. Salvador Dali’s Limp Cranes and Cranian Harp has some of the painter’s familiar objects, including a melting clock and pod-like creatures floating as if waiting to be realized in some greater canvas.
Other artists from the Iberian Peninsula are represented. Pable Picasso’s depiction of a picador’s deadly skill is done in dark tones, the fatal sword (if I correctly interpret the work’s turbid surface) descends from the top of the frame like a bolt of light. Two works by Francisco Goya are unique for the faces: men whose lopsided smiles suggest poverty, abandon, and joy lifted from the reality of hard lives.
These works are in a show whose intimacy contains a wide swath of names and influences. The show is scheduled until December 21 and is well worth a look.
Hispanic Legacy Extended until February 1, 2025 Tues. – Fri.: 10:00 to 6:00 Sat.: 10:00 – 5:00. Gallery Address 600 South Lake Avenue, #102 Pasadena, CA. 91106
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