Roberto Juarez

American, 1952

Roberto Juarez has been an important figure in the American art scene since his first solo exhibition at Robert Miller Gallery in 1981. He work is rooted in drawing, botanical imagery, and a tactile way of layering paper and organic matter. He is known for his painterly, nature-based, abstract painting influenced by many travels and interest in the traditions of Hispanic and non-Western painting. Since 2000, he has incorporated geometric systems into his paintings and prints, and more recently has been developing large-scale paintings from collages made from Artforum ads and other mixed media.

Juarez’s most recent prints are Fatherwell and Orange Stoplight. In the studies for these new prints he combined casual, small sketches made daily, found botanical prints and magazine illustrations. The dynamic between intended shapes and emotional brushwork convey a physical sense of the artist’s pictorial dance. These non-hierarchical images allude to the way artists through the centuries have fixed the fleeting aspects of nature by transforming natural shapes and colors of flowers into motifs and symbols. 

Juarez’s work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Miami Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He won the Prix de Rome in 1997, and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2001-2002.

Photo courtesy of Anderson Ranch Arts Center