Biography

Born in 1955 in Brooklyn, Candida Alvarez earned a BFA from Fordham University, New York in 1977 and studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, Maine in 1981. She received her MFA from Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut in 1997, and studied at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland from 2010–12.

Candida Alvarez paints with emotion and verve to create what she calls “chatty abstractions,” paintings that interweave narrative and pictorial structures. Working with a diversity of materials including fabric, acrylic paint, enamel, glitter, and galkyd on various supports from canvas and cotton to vellum and PVC mesh, Alvarez constructs shape-shifting abstractions that dream-catch both light and space. She imbues her complex and vibrantly layered paintings with references to personal histories, childhood memories, Pop art, modernism, cartoon art, kitsch, and her Puerto Rican heritage.

Combining quotidian patterns and palettes with formal abstraction, Alvarez mixes and remixes flowing fields of color with hard edge, geometric forms. She delicately balances issues of abstraction and representation so that shapes may resemble flowers, a faceted jewel, or bird wings, and pure, heightened color may evoke a bowl of ripe mangoes on the kitchen table. For Alvarez, everything in life and in art is fluid and synonymous. Painting is an adventure and a vehicle that allows her to move through time and space.
Lives and works in Chicago (as of 7/14/2022)

---

Your current search criteria is: Artist is "Candida Alvarez".