TONY ABEYTA | MATEO ROMERO, ALTAMIRA SCOTTSDALE
Altamira Fine Art Scottsdale is pleased to welcome Navajo contemporary artist Tony Abeyta for a new exhibition opening February 26th. Tony will be joined by guest artist Mateo Romero.
Meet the Artists at the show reception and Native Spirit ArtWalk Thursday, March 1st from 6:30-9pm.
Tony Abeyta’s primary focus has been on painting the emotional experience one finds in the New Mexico landscape.
“There exists a rhythm in the land where I was born. I spend a lot of time deciphering the light, the cascades of mesas into canyons, the marriage between earth and sky and the light as it constantly changes at whim, the intensity of rock formations, and the sage and chamisa that accent this poetic experience, unlike anywhere else I have seen. I am beckoned to remember it and then to paint it.” -Tony Abeyta
New work includes landscapes and figurative works, both oil on canvas, and mixed media on paper.
Contemporary Cochiti Pueblo painter Mateo Romero is an internationally known artist. He attended Dartmouth College and studied with acclaimed artists Ben Frank Moss and Varujan Boghosian.
“My paintings are based in abstract expressionist references. Bold colors slash across canvas, hot colors vibrates next to cold, drips and smears hover over the surface. Action painting references abound in stabbing, gestural marks. Artists like Franz Kline, William De Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell are companions along this urgent pathway of color and surface.” -Mateo Romero
For more information call (480) 949-1256.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
Tony Abeyta is a Navajo contemporary artist working in mixed media paintings. He is a graduate of New York University with an honorary doctorate from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. He was the 2012 recipient of the New Mexico Governor’s Excellence in the Arts Award, and recognized as a Native treasure by the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. Tony currently works in both Santa Fe, NM, and Berkeley, CA.
His work is included in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian; Boston Fine Arts Museum; the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ; New Mexico Fine Arts Museum; the Autry Museum in Los Angeles; and the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis; as well as in many other public and private collections. Recent exhibitions include the Masters of the American West Art Exhibition and Sale at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, CA.
Museum Collections
Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ
Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, NM
Harwood Museum, Taos, NM
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Museum of Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, NM: Permanent Interior Mural
In Main Gallery (2000)
Palm Springs Fine Art Center, Palm Springs, CA
Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Santa Fe, NM
Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe, NM
Montclaire Art Museum, Montclaire, NJ
Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, NM
Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Mateo Romero received an MFA in printmaking from the University of New Mexico. He is an award-winning artist who has exhibited internationally in Canada and the United States. He is a former Dubin Fellow in painting at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, NM. He paints in his studio in Santa Fe and lives in Pojoaque Pueblo with his wife, Melissa, and their children Erik, Povi, Rain and River.
As Native people we born into this world with an expectation that we will be participatory in life and contribute to society. What I have contributed most directly to life are my children and my art. Painting and drawing for me have always been urgent, compelling, and necessary. I make marks out of a need to communicate, to contextualize, to form meaning in the world around me. It is less of a choice and more of a manic drive deeply embedded in my psyche. Without these things, my life would be empty indeed.
Recent exhibitions include the Coors Western Art Exhibit & Sale in Denver, CO, and the Masters of the American West Art Exhibition and Sale at the Autry Museum in Los Angeles, CA.