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View more works by Francisco Benitez
FRANCISCO BENITEZ
Born: 1967; Taos, New Mexico
SELECTED ONE-ARTIST EXHIBITIONS
2006 Monastero del Ritiro, Siracusa, Sicily (May—in conjunction with Festival of Ancient Theater)
2005 “Tempus Temporis”, Art & Industry, Santa Fe, NM.
2004 Red Box, Barjols, France (catalog).
2003 “The Bacchae”, Cline Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM.
“Recent Works”, Chase Gallery, Boston, MA.
2002 “Mediterraneo”, Galleria d’arte Il Sagittario, Messina, Italy (catalog).
“Pompeii Series”, Cline Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM.
2001 “Le Rouge et le Noir”, Aumônerie St-Jacques, Gordes, France
Chase Gallery, Boston, MA.
1999 “The Figure: From Color to Line”, Cline Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM.
1998 Chase Gallery, Boston, MA.
“An Art Alphabet”, Cline Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM.
1997 “The Senses”, Cline Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM.
“Dialogues”, Galerie Sainte-Catherine, Rodez, France (with Lucille Colin).
1996 “Female Allegorical Portraits”, Cline Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM.
1994 “From Figurative to Abstract”, Santa Fe Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM.
1993 “Portraits”, 8th Street Gallery, Albuquerque, NM.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2006 “The Figure”, Cline Fine Art, Scottsdale, AZ.
2004 “The Figure”, Cline Fine Art, Scottsdale, AZ.
2002 “Nostalgia: il paradiso ritrovato”, Chiostro di San Francesco, Sorrento, Italy.
2001 “The Death of Painting”, Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, NM; curated by Guy Ambrosino and Jon Carver.
2000 “Sanctified or Censored”, Santuario de Guadalupe, Santa Fe, NM; curated by Monica Steinhoff.
“Un ensemble d’artistes”, Galerie Thuillier, Paris, France.
“Revealing the Nude”, Chase Gallery, Boston, MA (catalog).
1999 “Realism ‘99”, Van de Griff Gallery, Santa Fe, NM.
1998 “Ida y Vuelta: Twelve New Mexico Artists”, Musée Denys-Puech, Rodez, France.
“Faces of Woman”, Las Vegas Arts Council, Las Vegas, NM.
“MICRO-Exhibition”, Galleri COLON, Borås, Sweden.
1997 “Figure and Fantasy”, Chase Gallery, Boston, MA (catalog).
1995 “Biennale Méditerranéenne de la Jeune Peinture”, Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice, France (catalog).
“Salon d’Octobre”, Association Espace Montauriol, Montauban, France.
1994 “Visions of Excellence VIII”, Fine Arts Gallery, Albuquerque, NM.
“Thirty Under Thirty”, Ralph Greene Gallery, Albuquerque, NM.
1993 “Collage”, The Meyer East Gallery (formerly Munson Gallery), Santa Fe, NM.
“The Nude: From Classical to Erotic”, Island Gallery, Albuquerque, NM.
“Eleventh Annual Invitational”, Dartmouth Street Gallery, Albuquerque, NM.
Francisco Benítez pg. 2
EDUCATION
Bachelor of Arts of Fine Arts, Department of Art and Art History, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 1991. Semester of graduate-level independent study (Painting), University of New Mexico (1992). Facultad de Bellas Artes, Universidad de Granada, Spain (1990-1991). New York University, Dept. of Art History (1989). Art Student’s League, New York (1987-1988). St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM (1985-1987).
ACTIVITIES
• Lived for three months in Campania region in Italy (2002) to study Pompeian frescoes and 17th century Neapolitan School. Continues to return to the region yearly to study frescoes.
• Lecture, “Light and Spirituality in Baroque Painting: Georges de La Tour”, St. John’s College, Santa Fe, NM, January, 2001.
• Curator and co-organizer of the exhibition, “Ida y Vuelta: Twelve New Mexico Artists”, Musée Denys-Puech, Rodez, France, summer, 1998 (catalog).
• Taught old master techniques at Verlézarts, Rodez, France (1996-97).
• Secretary for Albuquerque United Artists, Albuquerque, NM (1992-93). Also organized exhibitions and did volunteer teaching.
• Commissioned to do painting for book cover of Sor Juana’s Second Dream by Alicia
Gaspar de Alba, University of New Mexico Press, 1999.
SELECTED PRESS
Michael Moore, “Tempus Temporis”, THE Magazine, November, 2005.
Teri Thomson Randall, “Benítez’ Dramatis Personae”, Pasatiempo (cover), Oct. 17, 2003.
Dottie Indyke, “Classic Freedom”, Albuquerque Journal North, Oct. 17, 2003.
Luigi La Rosa, “Benitez Sapore Antico”, Centanove, Messina, Sicily, June 14, 2002.
Tania Toscano, “La forza communicativa di Francisco Benitez”, La Sicilia, June 16, 2002.
Lynn Cline, “Baroque Light”, Pasatiempo, January 25, 2001.
Paul Weidman, “The Journey from New Mexico to Rodez, France”, Pasatiempo, April 23, 1999.
Christine Frérot, “Ida y Vuelta: Twelve Artists from New Mexico”, Art Nexus, Spring 1999.
Featured Artist and Curator, “Peinture Fraîche”, host Jean Daive, Radio France, Paris,
July 23, 1998.
Nicole Zimmermann, “Ida y Vuelta”, Gazette des Tribunaux du Midi, July 10, 1998.
Wesley Pulkka, “New Work Reflects Growth”, Albuquerque Journal, April 9, 1998.
Kathleen McCloud, “Nuevo Mélange—Ida y Vuelta”, Santa Fe New Mexican, March 29, 1998.
Hollis Walker, “Francisco Benítez: A New Dialogue with the Past”, Pasatiempo, March 20, 1998.
Kathleen McCloud, “Dramatic Contrasts Between Darkness & Light”, Pasatiempo, Feb. 20, 1997.
Diane Armitage, “Female Allegorical Portraits”, THE Magazine, June 1996.
Gussie Fauntleroy, “Everywoman According to Francisco Benítez”, Pasatiempo, May 3, 1996.
Myriam Laffont, “Un Américain à Rodez”, La Dépêche du Midi, December 20, 1995.
Public Collections
National Hispanic Cultural Center, Permanent Display, Albuquerque, NM.
New Mexico State Legislature, Permenent Collection
Conseil Général de l’Aveyron, France
Numerous private collections : United States, France, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Mexico, etc.
LA SICILIA
Syracuse, Sicily
May 21, 2006
By Daniela Frisone
The Exhibition of Francisco Benitez is a “Joyous Shake Up”
In the space where an exhibition takes place, where the corridors have canvases “stapled” to the walls, we strive to understand the work. At least, every once in a while, we are able to fathom the imagined universe of the artist and his models of reference. Then, we proceed to ask the artist about the work; depending on his response we leave with our heads high, with the impression that we nearly intuited everything correctly! When or whether you visit the exhibition of Francisco Benitez, held at the Monastero del Ritiro, from May 14 to June 4, you will be joyously shaken up. Your head will be swimming in a myriad references to the past, even those which are most ancient. And, at the same time, none at all. How is one to put it, those oils, those marvelous canvases bathed in red, blue and indigo remind us of endless stories which spring from Pompeii to Egypt, then to Ancient Greece. And when we understand them from a distance we smile: “but I have already seen those images”; then we get closer, and from there things are no longer what they seem. To be more precise, they are not simply ghosts, copies of copies of far-distant echoes, pseudo-imagined or historically-reconstructed. They aren’t that for no reason at all. When we are there, in front of the work, the past doesn’t seem to matter, or it matters to the extent to which we become the past. Sure, we see the coordinated movements of the Greek Series, the carnal sensuality of the theatrical Roman figures, the play of light and shadow on the faces inspired by the 17th century. But we are there, there inside. In the thought which transfigures them we are surprised to discover that they are mirrors of our own vanity, our own feigning. It is there, in every instant, that the gaze betrays the psychological condition inherent to humankind, all throughout time, in every place. This is Benitez’ greatest lesson. A young American Latino artist, Benitez has forged his content and style from a philosophical and artistic background in New Mexico--from the Art Student’s League in New York to the Facultad de Bellas Artes in Granada, Spain, and UNM. Certainly, he has embraced the post-modern concept of a return to order.
However, his “archaeological painting” doesn’t attempt any tricks on us. His citationism as conceptual research focused on tradition does not ignore an inner need which takes on the name, “the human journey”. You will see, when we view highlighted before us, the Egyptian funerary portraits--products of Greco-Roman civilization—to the inclusion of ephemeral aspects of certain Pompeian graffiti (think of the current Sicilian election campaigns)—to reconstructing marvelous but forgotten masterpieces of 4th BC artists such as Polygnotos, Parrhasios or Apelles. It is here that we arrive at a new dimension, which goes beyond tragedy, portaits of women, or of long-gone gods. We enter into history, and through this history we recognize our own traits, those ordinary psychological aspects of our lives which are always in mutation, and the inexplicable magical moments which on the other hand are always present, and contemporary. “The idea of graffiti as the expression of the people who pass by,” is the way in which Benitez gives merit to this elevated idea. He is one who understands the metaphor of flight in the canvases of the caravaggesque series, who uses the Ancient Greek technique of encaustic to restore dignity and glory to the art of the past, and transfers those immortal things on, those expressions, to us, people of today.
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