Eduardo carrillo—within a cultural context

Eduardo Carrillo is first and foremost a storyteller. They tell us of history, mythology and spirituality, and of his keenly felt relationship to the history of European and Mexican painting. A Chicano artist, Eduardo Carrillo had a bicultural perspective. There he studied art with William Brice and earned his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in and respectively.

Following his years at U. Carrillo copied a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, using the traditional technique of oil glazes on wood panel. Through the gallery, Eduardo encountered other artists who would become some of the most well known artists in L. A as well as life-long friends. His paintings from the early s show the influence of the Spanish masters: Velazquez, Sanchez de Cotan, and Zurburan.

He honed a kind of magic realism in these paintings of still lives, landscapes and empty rooms.

Eduardo Carrillo: Within a Cultural

He moved his family to Baja to live, and started a school to teach painting, weaving, and ceramics, thus restoring the traditional crafts of the area. He deepened his ties to the land where his grandmother was born, and made friends with the people who were to serve as models for his paintings for decades. In , he joined the art faculty at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he was a professor until he died in The foreground of the painting appears to be a ceremonial space, similar to an altar.

Affirmations of a cultural past are often presented in the sacred art forms of altars, milagros, nichos, cajas, ancient Mesoamerican icons, narrative installations and what really amounts to the visualization of a spiritual quest for identity from a colonized population.