Jesus Matheus

JESUS MATHEUS

Biography

b. 1957 Caracas, Venezuela – lives in Boston, Massachusetts

Since 1973, Venezuelan artist Jesús Matheus has studied the art of printmaking intensively, both in Venezuela and Brazil. His paintings and drawings reflect this graphic background in their direct linearity and layers of texture and meaning.

Jesús Matheus was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1957. He studied at the Escola de Belas Artes, Universidad Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1981) and graduated from the Centro de Enseñanza Gráfica, Caracas (1987). From 1992 to 1999 and in 2003, Matheus taught printmaking and drawing at the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Superiores de Artes Plásticas Armando Reverón, now Universidad Nacional Experimental de las Artes (Caracas), from which he also obtained a BFA degree with the thesis “Visual/Manual. A Mode of Making in the Visual Arts” (2012). He has lived in Boston, Massachusetts, since 2005.

Influenced by modern Latin American artists such as Joaquín Torres-García and Wifredo Lam, as well as by indigenous and pre-Columbian craft and folk art, Matheus executes geometric, minimalist pieces that are cannot be perceived as cold or sterile. Rather, the artwork maintains the warmth and richness of its historical foundations and becomes almost archeological in character.

Critic Carlos Palacios wrote, “Matheus is not interested in re-interpreting history, his visual references remain faithful to the originals and he only arranges them fragmentarily…” The result is drawings, paintings and installations that evoke a history culled from research in culture and ethnicity, expeditions throughout South America and, as always, personal experience.

Jesus Matheus has taught Drawing and Printmaking since 1992 at the Armando Reveron Institute, Caracas, and has exhibited extensively in South America and internationally. His work is part of several public and private collections in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the United States, Spain, Switzerland, France, and Austria. The artist currently lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.

To dowload Jesus Matheus CV and Chronology press click

JesusMatheus_CV

JesusMatheus_Chronology