Ricardo Mazal - Tapa dura

"Mazal's work is luminously beautiful. In the tradition of abstract expressionism it demonstrates what the painter Kandinsky decribed as the need for the "spiritual in art." . . To bring all this together in one volume is an impressive feat, and the book serves as a record not only of finished work but also of the artistic process--idiosyncratic, focused, innovative--that brought it into being."

In his stunning series, La Tumba de la Reina Roja: From Reality to Abstraction, Mexican painter Ricardo Mazal expresses the profound sensations he experienced while visiting the Tomb of the Red Queen, a recently discovered burial site dating to about 600 AD at Palenque, the ancient Maya ceremonial city. Mazal began this body of work by extensively photographing the site's temples, stones, and surrounding landscape. These images became the basis for abstract works that reflect a creative dialogue between digital technology and traditional painting modes. In color photographs, monotypes, and monumentally scaled paintings, Mazal eloquently interprets the myriad themes evoked by this Maya noblewoman and her tomb--history and time's passage, spirituality, nature and culture, and human mortality. Ricardo Mazal was born in 1950 in Mexico and resides in Santa Fe and New York. The exhibition and publication of La Tumba de la Reina Roja: From Reality to Abstraction is a collaborative effort between Mazal and Chiaroscuro Gallery, Santa Fe and Scottsdale. He has exhibited his work extensively in the United States, Latin America, and Europe, including at such institutions as the Museo de Arte Contempor neo de Monterrey, Mexico (MARCO); the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Museo de Antropologia, Mexico City; the Americas Society, New York; and the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe. Mazal has received the prestigious Creador Art stico award from the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (FONCA), Mexico, and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.