Pomp and Circumstance Painting

"Born in 1940 in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, Gustavo Ramos Rivera moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1969 and gradually established himself as a highly respected abstract painter and print maker. He belongs to a generation of Mexican artists who emerged between two distinctive eras: one, a society still clearly marked by Mesoamerican traditions, the mestizo land whose heritage had been both simplified and compellingly codified by the Mexican muralists; and the second, a postwar culture in the process of becoming truly international, which was moving inexorably beyond the grasp of those traditions as well as their representations, and which came of age during the early 1960s. As an artist of this subsequent generation, Ramos Rivera has demonstrated an ever greater willingness to look outside Mexico for ideas, and particularly to the contemporary art of Europe and the United States." Source: excerpted from Gustavo Ramos Rivera by Juvenal Acosta, in association with the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art & the San Jose Museum of Art, 2006 1940 Born in Villa Acuna, Coahuila, Mexico San Francisco, CA , 1969 - present