Latin American Art volume 5, number 1, 1993
GRIMANESA AMOROS
Mysteries and Metaphors
By Dominique Padurano of Latin American Art
Filled with the tension between dark, bold outlines and exuberantly bright figures and backgrounds, the work of Grimanesa Amorós has been described as both “introverted” and “universal,” “humorous” and “tragic,” “full of angst” and “laden with eroticism.” The artist believes that such conflict will open up her work to multifaceted interpretations, enabling “every person who looks at my work to see something different.” Some might comment taht Amorós’ entire career is a reconciliation of the seemingly irreconcilable into a formula for artistic success. She is a Latin American woman in a world where the art of Anglo-Saxon men has long been praised as the “standard.” While some artists may have avoided the meeting of these two worlds, considering it impossible, Amorós’ persistence and artistic courage has transformed the unlikely into reality. Most importantly, Amorós’ paintings themselves proudly affirm that she has never considered speaking with her own voice antithetical to entering the mainstream of unrelentingly powerful art.
Amorós was. born in Lima, Peru in 1962. Her parents fostered her precocious talent for drawing and painting, providing private lessons and buying her supplies on their trips abroad. Amorós attended university in Lima as a student of psychology, while she continued practicing art full-time. She soon realized, however, that developing her skills in two areas would necessarily detract from complete proficiency in either, so after receiving her degree she chose to dedicate herself fully to her art. Amorós entered a private atelier in Lima, where she embarked upon an intense period of artistic experimentation. Like most young painters, she began training with oils, though today she paints predominantly with acrylic due to the variety of texture the medium allows. By layering different consistencies of acrylic paint, Amorós has found that she can achieve both watercolor-like transparency and oil-like impasto in one painting. By the time Amorós was twenty-two, her works had shown in three solo and three group exhibitions. The artist moved in 1984 to New York City, where she felt not only would her opportunities for professional success be greater than in Peru, but the indicators of her artistic “worth” would also be more competitive.
The years from 1984 through 1988 were ones of rapid growth for the artist. She received a four-year fellowship to study painting and printmaking at the Art Student League, a private institution which has offered training in the fine arts since 1975. During her first years in New York she visited museums and galleries around the city in order to study the masters. To the developing artist, however, New York offered not merely classes and museums, but also, and perhaps most meaningfully, the “breathtaking influence of the street,” as Amorós describes it. The bright colors and the figure’s acrobatic gestures in The Tortoise is Watching, 1992, is illustrative of the manner in which New York’s energy continually inspires her art.
When one looks at her impressive list of exhibitions and activities, Amorós integration into the chaotic world of New York appears to be as seamless as her entrance into the art sphere of Lima. During these early years, she quickly branched out from the Art Student League Gallery into the Manhattan gallery scene and beyond into institutions across the east coast.
Amorós cherishes and takes pride in her Hispanic heritage although she looks upon her gender as a more formative influence, perhaps because she believes that society doesn’t give enough credit to being a woman. She tries to affirm the identity of women as part of her everyday life, though she chose early in her career not the portray the struggles of women through her art as specifically “feminist” artists do.
In 1990 Amorós had a solo exhibition at a gallery in Lima; 1991 and 1992 also saw the artist’s participation in group exhibitions in the capital. After living on three different continents (she lived in Europe for a time in addition to North and South America), she views herself as a collage of all the people and the cultures with which she has come into contact.
Like their creator, works of art themselves must possess some element of the universal. Yet, the relationship of the artist and her art with the larger universe is rarely simple and linear. The tension in Amorós’ work between the universal and personal invigorates each canvas. For example, The Power of Light, 1992, borrows its name from Luz Celeste, the artist’s deceased aunt. She is represented by the figure on the left who holds the penis of the central figure. But rather than dwell on the personal, Amorós uses it as a springboard to discuss larger issues. Regarding this painting Amorós has said, “This is a painting of what we are going through right now in New York City and in the whole world. Because if you look behind that man, there’s another man, so it’s a galy relationship, and there is a woman [with]…another woman, right? So this is a lesbian/gay relationship. It’s hard to explain. It has to be about our times, because we live in a time when we feel so out of control. I think art can lead us to another state of mind.” (Published interview with Quincy Troupe, “Amorós Voyage,” Javier Lumbreras catalogue, 1993.)
Although she begins her work abstractly, trying to resolve questions of color, composition and form, Amorós admits that human figures inevitably arise from the canvas. “They just come out,” and as she adds with a laugh, “I guess I just can’t get away from them.” Her large-scale canvases (anywhere from four to ten feet tall) are populated by single, couples, or group figures who project a wide range of human emotions, from isolated agony to exuberant ecstasy. But while the human form reappears throughout her work, the range of emotions and their specific relationship with the universal has shifted throughout her career.
Undoubtedly reflecting Amorós’ earlier training in psychology, all her paintings reflect a profound sensitivity to the individual, highly charged life of the psyche. The year 1990 marked the development of Amorós mature work in which she explored the darker side of the human soul. Titles such as Mr. Incognito, Anxiety, and Agony attest to the nature of the artist’s explorations. These works display a dark palette, dominated by ochres and blacks with highly expressive, textured application of paint.
The following year witnessed a crucial change in Amorós’ work. As her canvases increased in size their subject matter grew less morose. Of course, she did not completely abandon her former style completely. Works like Despair attest to the artist’s continuing interest in the inner turmoil of human beings. In 1991, however, one starts to see fewer single figures in favor of couples and even larger groups. When single figures do appear they seem less tortured than the angst-ridden individuals of the year before. Indeed, their titles—Meditations and Dreams are just two—indicate the artist’s increasingly stronger desire to examine a more sublime set of human emotions. The diptych Transformations epitomizes the artist’s artistic and thematic concerns of this year. Its four figures each appear to be deep within their own psychic spheres, yet their physical contact indicates a desire to relate with the surrounding environment. Although black still defines these figures, primary colors assume an important position where before somber earth tones predominated.
In terms of style, the paintings of 1990 and 1991 remain relatively close. Amorós uses large, expressive strokes of black to outline the faces and bodies of her subjects, often contrasting their rough edges against a white background. Drips and splatterse of paint sometimes race back and forth along the canvas, adding to the work’s texture and signaling the artist’s commitment not to representing life realistically, but to the process of painting itself.
Amorós’ most recent works continue her trend away from the psychically contemplative, toward a celebration of life’s physical joys. Gone is the isolation of three years ago; the majority of paintings from 1992 and 1993 explore relationships: amorous, sexual, and those somewhere in between. Embracing Couple, 1992, is a striking example of this new style. The sweetness of the couple’s caress is no more crucial than the immediate physicality of their kiss. Lost in a world of indigo and yellow, perhaps the smaller figures represent their erotic desires rising to the surface. Red and green frequently fill the large canvases of this year and last, while the ochres and black from years past can barely be recalled. Now Amorós paints bold fields of color, without losing any of her trademark texture. When multicolored patches and drips scar the surface, it is usually the background, rather than the figures, which assumes the “damage” of Amorós expressionism.
All these works depict at least two, if not more, humanoid figures: tiny creatures—either birds, fish, or other humans—will also often appear next to the central subjects. These little figures sometimes crept into the artist’s earlier work, but now they are more fully integrated into the main action of the painting, either hypsiaclly, chromatically, or both. In Lover’s Action, 1992, as in other recent works, little beasts watch and participate in sexual acts. Amorós says that she is unsure about from where the little beasts come, but justified their existence with the assertion, “Well, the world itself is full of little creatures.” Accepting the world, rather than lamenting its desolation, is characteristic of much of the new work of Amorós.
Like Lover’s Action, many of the new paintings depict explicitly erotic encounteres. In recalling The Diver, 1993, Amorós remarked, “I thought to myself, ‘Why am I going to have just one penis here, let’s put two. Why not?'” Though one moment the artist is quick to laugh about life’s hyperboles, in the next she explains that a second inspiration behind the new canvases is also one of the most pressing issues of her artistic generation. “Sex is all around me. In the art world, AIDS is a very important issue.” Instead of avoiding the taboo, especially in times of crisis, Amorós embraces the forbidden and makes it art.
Amorós bravery in the face of possible resistance has been a recurring theme throughout her still brief, yet busy career. Perhaps her willingness to continually confront that which is hidden—in society as well as in our souls—is the key to the constant renewal of her art. She values the ability of an artist to change styles, and absolutely requires such evolution from herself. But above style and content, Amorós prizes something more intangible still: “I like work that creates a certain emotion in me, a mystery or something.” Whether she is contemplating a pre-Columbian monument, or a piece by her contemporaries, Amorós wants to see metaphors, she believes, may the spectator identify personally with the work, thus allowing art to transcend its status as transitory object to enter into the realm of the universal. Grimanesa Amorós’ own art—embodying mystery and overwhelming human emotions—stands as a model for this spiritual-artistic transcendence.