Through November 17th, 2013
MDC Museum of Art & Design, Freedom Tower 600 Biscayne Blvd.
Miami, FL
The sweeping canvases of the late Cuban painter Antonia Eiriz are not always easy to view. That is not to say they are harsh and hard — very little overt violence is expressed in these works; but the blurred faces and figures are contorted, silently shouting out in pain, or they are just silently suffering.
Many of her works — thought to walk the line between expressionism and abstraction — are covering the walls of MDC Museum of Art + Design at the Freedom Tower, a huge space well-suited to this retrospective of an artist under-appreciated in the United States, and Miami (although not by many within the art community). In fact, this is the biggest exhibit of her work, called Antonia Eiriz: A Painter and Her Audience.
In an interesting addition, curator and artist Michele Weinberg has included a number of contemporary artists who have been influenced by Eiriz. The variety of works highlighted in this section — from Luisa Basnuevo and Nereida Garcia-Ferraz to Ana Mendieta, Glexis Novoa and Tomas Sanchez — underscore that Eiriz’s influence was far broader than simply imparting the tricks of the trade to a new group of emerging artists.