Pedro Friedeberg: Praise of Folly

Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present Pedro Friedeberg: Praise of Folly, opening April 27th with an artist reception from 6 - 8 pm. The exhibition will feature an eclectic mix of Pedro Friedeberg’s art across a fairly broad range of media including: hand woven carpets, paintings, his iconic hand-chairs, fantastical sculptures and prints. A catalogue will be available with an essay by Dan Cameron.

"One of the master illusionists of late 20th century art, Pedro Friedeberg is enjoying something of a resurgent moment in the second decade of the 21st century. Ever since the 2009 retrospective of his work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City coincided one year later with the definitive critical study on him, authored by James Oles, there has been a noticeable uptick in international critical, collector and museum attention toward his unique oeuvre. This recognition, insofar as it includes the U.S. art intelligentsia, is long overdue, as Friedeberg, who celebrated his 80th birthday at the beginning of this year, is one of the most celebrated living artists in Mexico, and his artistic trajectory, considered as a whole, is nothing short of remarkable."

"Born in 1938 in Florence, Italy to German-Jewish parents, Friedeberg grew up in Mexico City from age three, and as a child was particularly drawn to the illusionistic representation of architectural space, both in Italian Renaissance architecture and 18th century painting, as well M.C. Escher and Josef Albers. While studying architecture at university, he met the distinguished artist Mathias Goeritz (1915-1990), who became a lifelong friend, collaborator, and immediate champion of Friedeberg’s distinctive work. Within a couple of years, Friedeberg had met Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington and was having his first one-man exhibition at Galería Diana at the age of 22."

"His self-identification as a Surrealist as late as 1960 appears to have had as much to do with the circles that he moved in as with a strongly held belief that the collision of art, mass culture, and technology in the 1960s would expand the thresholds of human creativity. It was probably somewhat misleading for him to refer to himself as a Surrealist. In truth, his work represents several separate strands of 20th century aesthetics tied together in a bow, from Giorgio de Chirico’s la pittura metafisica and the classic surrealism of André Breton, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, to the geometry-based abstraction favored by such modernist giants as Wasily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Georges Vantongerloo. However, any precise stylistic categorization of Friedeberg’s work is stymied by the fact that nobody makes art in quite the same way than he does."

Pedro Friedeberg is a internationally acclaimed artist. His work is found in more than 50 international museum collections including The Museum of Modern Art, NYC and Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France, and Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art, CA.

Founded in 2004, and located in the historic Olmos Park District of San Antonio, Ruiz-Healy Art specializes in contemporary art with an emphasis on Latin American and Texas connected artists. To request high-resolution images and more information about the exhibition, please contact the gallery at 210-804-2219. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday 11:00 -4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

*quoted text is taken from the essay by Dan Cameron