The next iteration of the LongHouse Talks series, set for Sunday afternoon at 3, will be a posthumous celebration of “Tony Bechara: Annotations of Color Schemes,” a new book by the painter and former board president of El Museo del Barrio, who died in Manhattan on April 23.
Speakers include Carrie Rebora Barratt, the director of LongHouse Reserve; Oscar Molina, an artist; Phong Bui, the publisher and artistic director of The Brooklyn Rail, and Mago Enrique Martinez, a curator.
Bechara’s geometric abstraction process involved dividing his canvas into hundreds of quarter-inch squares, which he meticulously filled in with complementary colors. Among the cultural influences evoked by these grid paintings are the pointillism of Seurat and Signac; hard-edge abstraction, traditional weaving, and pixel art.
The book is inspired by Bechara’s notes and color formulas that form the basis of his acrylic paintings. To be published by Lisson Gallery, it features over 130 illustrations, with foldouts and multiple materials, as well as a glossary of key motifs that introduce his artistic language to the public for the first time.
Because his parents did not believe he could make a living as an artist, Bechara studied philosophy, economics, and international relations in college, and even started law school. But he enrolled in the School of Visual Arts in 1967 and never looked back.
Widely exhibited, his work was in the Whitney Biennial in 1975 and the subject of a solo show 10 years later at El Museo del Barrio. Solo gallery shows took place in New York; San Juan; Monterrey, Mexico; Miami, Washington, D.C., and Munich, and notable group exhibitions were at MoMA PS1, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others.
During his 15-year tenure as board president of Museo del Barrio, Bechara played an important role in the institution’s transformation into a nationally and internationally recognized Latinx and Latin American museum.
Tickets are $35, $25 for members.
