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Bending steel with paint
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Juan Alonso taught himself to paint. This Cuban born artist’s lack of formal training brings a raw, unselfconscious quality to his work. Alonso, who currently resides in Seattle, Washington, says that, “more than anything, humanity is the driving force in my work”.
Three years before Fidel Castro came to power, the prolific painter was born in Havana into a family of iron workers. All the men worked in the family iron business and lived in the same house that his grandfather, father and uncles had built on the sands of Santa Maria del Mar.
When he was nine years old, Alonso had the chance to leave Cuba to live with relatives in Miami. He spoke no English, and lived in a one-bedroom cottage in Miami with three others. "Everybody worked hard. That's the immigrant experience, to work and work."
Alonso's mysterious, muted paintings are a homage to his father's ironwork and the pots his mother, who died of cancer when he was six, decorated in floral patterns. “The quick loss of innocence I experienced as a young person in a foreign place, learning a new language, and growing up without my immediate family will always affect my work.” the Artist states.
The time spent in his family’s wrought iron shop can be seen reflected in the line quality of Alonso’s paintings and drawings. “I know the way steel bends and I think about it when I am drawing a line. If it seems awkward, I rethink it as if I were bending steel”. His paintings embody this history of generations of iron workers, melding life with steel, and yet simultaneously fragile. “The human condition," says Alonso, "our fragile existence on this planet, the way we relate, love, isolate, and unnecessarily damage ourselves and the world we live in are fascinating topics, no matter how they are ultimately expressed.”
For more info: Juan Alonso will be exhibiting at the Aqua/Wynwood Fair December 3-6 during Art Basel/Miami. A solo show of his work will be at Booth #28 at the Francine Seders Gallery. You can also view more paintings at http://www.juanalonso.info/
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