El pintor de la calle (The Street Painter)

During the 1980s, Roberto Márquez's paintings began to show complex visual narratives evoking pieces of stories or passages from literary texts. In 1985, Márquez relocated from Guadalajara to Phoenix, Arizona, where he exhibited a series of new paintings tied to the Mexican narrative tradition and to popular and religious cultural practices. The rich imaginary that Márquez recreates in his works often includes pieces of texts and engage folk aesthetics. In The Street Painter, the poetic action of the writer is embodied in the graffiti artist or housepainter who marks the walls with the words Art=Solitude while a blindfolded woman sits in ignorance. The scene is simultaneously ordinary and allegorical. It critiques art’s antisocial and alienating effect while celebrating the forms of popular art that are inseparable from everyday life.

Text credit: Produced in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and Patricia Ortega-Miranda