Nancy Hoffman Gallery


JUAN GONZALEZ
Juan Gonzalez was born in Camaguey, Cuba in 1942. He received his M.F.A. from the University of Miami, Florida. He died in 1992.

Dreamscapes: The Art of Juan Gonzalez, by Irene McManus, published by Hudson Hills Press in 1993, is a complete monograph on the artist's work.

In Gonzalez's piece In His Silence, we see the artist's love of art history, the crown of sacred fire or light was inspired by Redon's The Crown (Musee d'Orsay 1910), the stone sculpture he based on Alexandre Falguiere's 1867 Tarcisius, boy martyr (Musee d'Orsay).
REMBRANDT'S HANDS

Juan Gonzalez, REMBRANDT'S HANDS..., 1990,
mixed media, 33 x 29 inches
MAR de LAGRIMAS

Juan Gonzalez, MAR de LAGRIMAS, 1987, mixed media on paper, 27 x 43 inches




IN HIS SILENCE

Juan Gonzalez, IN HIS SILENCE, 1988, mixed media on paper, 12 x 21 inches
McManus writes in her book,
"The intense fiery color of the piece is unusual for Gonzalez. Luminous, rich midnight blue trompe-l'oeil mosaics--the outcome of a trip he made to the dazzling tomb of Galla Placidia in Ravenna--unify the three panels. With the wooden insets and ledge, Gonzalez was making a reference to the cross of the Crucifixion--and I wanted the wood to feel completely real to the viewer. The ovals are something you really do find in plywood, but I was playing them off against the halo. At the same time, the ovals have a symbolic logic: I debated for a long time where I wanted those shapes to go, because I wanted them to be ascending. Yet the oval patterns in the wood also suggest curtain fabric, something like moire. Use of the halo in Christian art is coeval with the mosaics of Ravenna. The oval shape occurring in Gonzalez's flaming halo and in the plywood is the mandorla or vesica, the almond- or fish-shaped oval of light expressing spiritual radiance in sacred art, since the fish had been one of the secret signs of Christianity among the early believers and martyrs. The oval often surrounds or contains sacred figures in art--for instance, the fiery mandorla that frames the Virgin and Child in the sky of Carlo Crivelli's Vision of the Blessed Gabriele of about 1489 (National Gallery, London). Gonzalez depicts his friend Angel attaining the transcendent light of sainthood.
"Sacred geometry gives way to a contemporary touch in the tape-looped message of the central mosaic medallion, designed to roll on into perpetuity.
'En su silencio....en su silencio....' (In his silence ....in his silence....)."

JUAN GONZALEZ's Biography
TO THE DIVER OF PAESTUM

Juan Gonzalez, TO THE DIVER OF PAESTUM, 1989, mixed media on paper, 23 x 36 inches