Galerie des Artistes Presents Paintings by Jorge Alzaga
 G
alerie des Artistes opened a new art exhibit last Friday,
with paintings by Mexican artist Jorge Alzaga. He studied art at the
prestigious La Esmeralda art academy from 1954 to 1958. He belongs in
a group of painters who struggled hard to make it in a time when there
were very few art galleries in Mexico, and even less art collectors.
His calling for art was defined when at the age of 12 he won a national
art contest. Those were the years when he knew Diego Rivera and his wife
Frida Kahlo, before her death. They were also the years when he knew
Siqueiros before he was incarcerated. At 18, he set his first studion,
and when he received an award from the Salon de la Plastica Mexicana,
he drew the attention of Galeria Mizrahi and a gallery from Canada, and
he began to be well known.
 His travels to New York afforded him direct contact with the works of
great masters at the Metropolitan Museum. By resolving composition in
space considering music as a resource to explain harmony, he rediscovers
the beauty of paintings by Tamayo and Matisse.
“In my paintings I enjoy talking about the past.” Alzaga says. “This
painting speaks of my childhood, the other one about my teenage years… a
bit of surrealism, a bit of symbolism, at times some expressionism, but above
all, a lot of color.”
To Jorge Alzaga, painting is about imagination. He never ceases to use
symbols, they are invariable in the scenes depicted in his paintings.
Alzaga prefers not to do “digested” paintings, as he calls
them. He insists on the fact that the viewer must find the message in
each of his paintings. Let hem enter that world, and through time, let
interpretations change.
In Jorge Alzaga’s art three stages can be distinguished. He cultivated
expressionism (1959-63), influenced by Kokotchka, and used colors inspired
to him by Caravaggio’s paintings. Later he returned to figurative
art (1971-75) in a time devoted to a constant search to reaffirm his
calling.
 “In 1975, the maestro says, “abstract art opened my eyes to face
space with total freedom to develop form and color. With new colors, quite
renaissance, completely separated from what I was doing at that time.
This is when the third phase of my work begins, when I begin swinging from
abstract to figurative. Now I alternate between them, and I have found enormous
riches in painting”.
Jorge Alzaga devotes from 8 to 10 hours a day to his work; this is how
he meets such great demand from collectors and museums.
Alzaga’s characters emerge from intimacy, secrets, and the depths
of being. The great theme of his paintings is the light exploited by
the painter in those faces and those feminine suggestions. A tri-dimensionality
and volume that feels very natural in the 21st century, in modern days
and in a context that overflows with originality.
The maestro wants to devote future works to a fusion of his abstract
and figurative stages. He will be guided by his light energy on a path
where light transforms into notes of infinite color.
The exhibition is open to the public during regular gallery hours.
Galerie des Artistes, Leona Vicario 248, Centro. Tel.
223 0006
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