A pioneering visible artist whose 50-year follow balanced exuberant spontaneity with measured precision, Bechara spent most of his life residing and dealing in New York. He was widely known for his fervent help of traditionally underrepresented artists, a lot of whom had been his friends, like Carmen Herrera and Leon Polk Smith, and his advocacy for Latine arts and establishments resembling El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem.
Tony Bechara, “Abstract Composition” (1970-1) (© Tony Bechara, courtesy Lisson Gallery)
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1942, Bechara initially traveled to Washington, DC, to check regulation at Georgetown College, the place he obtained his Bachelor’s diploma. Unsure about this profession trajectory, Bechara subsequently traveled to Paris, the place he studied on the Sorbonne for a 12 months whereas turning into immersed within the metropolis’s arts and tradition panorama. It was there that he developed a ardour for portray.
Again in the US within the early Sixties, Bechara enrolled on the Faculty of Visible Arts in Manhattan, growing a portray approach outlined by a system of managed chaos. Via experimental automated portray methods and meticulous premeditated grid-making, he explored the endless prospects of colour.
Tony Bechara, “Carib” (1973) (courtesy El Museo del Barrio)
Along with his artwork follow, Bechara was an energetic member of New York’s Latine and Latin American arts group, serving on the board of a number of native arts organizations together with the Studio in a Faculty, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and El Museo del Barrio, the place he was board chairman for 15 years. He was named chairman emeritus in 2016 and remained an important power on the museum, donating $1 million in 2018 to the establishment’s endowment to help its curatorial and teaching programs. In a 2015 interview with AzureAzure, Bechara described this cultural patronage as akin to “artistic projects”: “They are an extension of my commitment to art, like unfinished murals in which I work during the night.”
Patrick Charpenel, govt director of El Museo del Barrio, mentioned Bechara was “a catalytic presence in New York’s art world.”
“His own artistic practice was groundbreaking, and his deep commitment to championing overlooked artists helped expand and diversify the canon of art history,” Charpenel mentioned in a press release to Hyperallergic.
Tony Bechara, “19 Reds” (2015) (courtesy Parrish Artwork Museum)
All through his lifetime, Bechara’s dynamic compositions had been spotlighted in quite a few solo and group exhibitions, together with Ten Puerto Rican Artists (1970) on the Brooklyn Museum, the 1975 Whitney Biennial, and The Formed Area: Eccentric Codecs (1981) at MoMA PS1.
Right this moment his work might be discovered within the collections of establishments resembling Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, El Museo del Barrio, the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, and the Parrish Artwork Museum, whose Govt Director Mónica Ramírez-Montagut described Bechara as “a role model of all that can be accomplished in a life.” Earlier this 12 months, Bechara gifted his portray “19 Reds” (2015) to the museum’s assortment.
“His legacy lives on in the vibrant and pulsating geometry of his paintings,” Ramírez-Montagut advised Hyperallergic, “and in his unwavering commitment to uplifting artists and the creative community.”
