Product Description: Elias Rivera is a painter whose work both creates timeless images and displays virtuosity of technique. During his long career, Rivera has painted the human drama as it unfolds in settings as varied as civil-rights demonstrations, subways, rodeos, and the marketplaces of Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. His classical training and Old Master technique evoke a true narrative quality rarely seen in contemporary realist painting. This long-awaited, lavishly illustrated monograph spans forty years of Rivera's work and is the first to document his most recent large-scale paintings of unique marketplace, street scenes, and the people who inspire them. Regardless of the particulars of culture, place and time that appear in each painting, Elias Rivera consistently captures the essence of humanity.
Impressive Monograph for an Impressive Painter Hudson Hills Press spared no expense in this large scale, fully color illustrated monograph of one of the strong figurative painters in America today. Beginning with a page long statement by Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, followed by an introduction by the artist's friend Gene Hackman, and written by the always informative and dependable Edward Lucie-Smith, this huge book is overflowing with the richly color-saturated paintings of American Indians in Mexico and Guatemala with a nice sampling of Rivera's paintings for the noise of the cities of New York and Los Angeles. It is a well-detailed visual biography of a painter whose work continues to enthrall collectors.
Elias Rivera was born in 1937 of Puerto Rican parents living in the Bronx. He attended Art Students League under the tutelage of Frank Mason, and painted somewhat disturbing canvases of raw life and strife in the New York area before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1982. Since that move his palette blossomed under the sun of the high desert and he began painting the Indians who sit under the Portal in the square of Santa Fe selling their handicrafts. Impressed with both the quality of the Indian's work as well as the quality of their quiet ambience, Rivera began his travels into Mexico, staying in Oaxaca where he transformed the simple gathering of the townspeople into painterly tableaus. He also captured the color and mystery of the sequestered Tarahumara Indians producing some of his most exciting canvases of their rituals.
Now fully established as a noted painter, Rivera began to visit Guatemala 'because the colors of the fabrics and the people are so much richer' and began to fully realize his powerful palette, once again painting ordinary people clustered in life situations. The drama of Rivera's painting comes from the almost abstract color fields he creates in his drapery of the costumes: his paintings are never forced or posed - they just are captured moments of fascinating mood and humanity.
This book is as fine an artist monograph as has been produced and Hudson Hills Press steps to the top of the ranks as an art book publisher. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, November 06
A rare, unique treat. Elias Rivera painted social history at its best, from civil rights demonstrations and rodeo events to daily life in Central and South America, so it's fitting that the oversized ELIAS RIVERA tribute embraces a wide range of his works spanning a forty-year time frame. The monograph will prove essential for any comprehensive art library collection; not just those in Rivera's Santa Fe home: it gathers his realistic paintings in full color, gives them an oversized format to gain as much of the real work as possible, and pairs them with actor Gene Hackman's foreword and Edward Lucie-Smith's art history background to provide all the insights newcomers need to appreciate Rivera's style and heritage. There's nothing like it on the market, making it a rare, unique treat.
Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch
Rivera, a true master! This is truly a magnificent book of Elias Rivera's artwork. The quality of the printing is superb! Whether you are familiar with the artists work, or not, if you love figurative art, this book is a "must have" for your collection!! And, on [...], you'll love the amazingly low price for this book, which could be, and should be, at least three times as much.
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