Caio Fonseca Catalogue

C AIO FONSEC A20 may- 10 july 2011

TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY

62 SOUTH GLENWOOD ST PO BOX 1435

JACKSON WY 83001 TEL 307 733 0555

WWW.TAYLOEPIGGOTTGALLERY.COM

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PREFACE

In the months leading up to this exhibition, I often vividly recalled the

first time I encountered Caio’s paintings in person. At the Corcoran

Museum of Art in 2004 during his first solo museum show, I stood in

front of a massive canvas, smiling in joy and awe at the audacity of

the work. Caio’s paintings command your attention and respect while

igniting your imagination. They leave you feeling like you have just

held an enlightening conversation with your most confident, witty, and

brilliant friend. The paintings invite you into their dynamic layers of

positive and negative space. Their shapes, whether they are small and

repetitive or large and sweeping, achieve both a quiet balance and a

rhythmic moving dance. I was then, and have been ever since, utterly

enchanted.

Imagine my excitement as I planned a visit in the winter of 2011 to

Caio’s Fifth Street studio. Joining Caio and his lovely assistant Margaret

in the perfectly imagined New York artist’s studio—bright, capacious,

creativity flowing through the air—I was taken to a place of peace.

The laughter and conversation flowed as my anticipation eased to

relaxation and opened the door for play, which was exactly what it felt

like to choose paintings for this show. I wish to thank Caio for making

me feel so at ease and welcome, and for sharing his extraordinary

vision and talent. I look forward to sharing the sense of awe and

discovery his paintings elicit with visitors to the gallery and viewers of

this catalogue, and also to continuing to be enchanted with Caio’s bold

and brilliant paintings for many years to come.

Tayloe Piggott

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EXCERPT

My father [Uruguayan artist Gonzalo Fonseca] used to say: ‘Your

autobiography will be in your work.’ I think he’s right. In my work, I

have all my contradictions. I’m a hermit that can work a crowd.

I’m a humorous person but extremely ascetic as well. We all have

contradictions, mine show up in the miracle of colours housed in fierce

structure. My parents and siblings are all artists. My father was wise

enough not to become my teacher, so we didn’t confuse father-and-

son roles with master-and-pupil roles, but I saw what the life of an

artist can be from him. It’s a huge responsibility. My mother used to

joke that it wouldn’t kill the family to have one dentist, something

useful. But we ended up all being artists and she’s very proud of that.

I grew up in New York. I left school and went to Barcelona [Spain]

for five years to study under Augusto Torres, alongside my brother,

Bruno. That was a very intensive Socratic method of learning figurative

painting. For me, to become an artist was such an undertaking, in terms

of what I thought a painter was. My father is such a towering example

of integrity and excellence that, for me, it was like an Everest to climb

and master. College was great for other things but not for what I

wanted to learn. I was lucky to have a teacher I respected so much. My

teacher was friends with [Pablo] Picasso and knew [Piet] Mondrian, so

we heard all these stories. My father had studied with Augusto’s father

[Joaquin Torres- Garcia; the father of Constructive Universalism]. So

I feel I have several generations of mentorship behind me through a

connection to that long line of work. They gave me the underpinning

of a great education. There is no prescribed way to being an artist; I

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certainly wouldn’t prescribe my way to other people. Some people

burn out, others make that part of their education. Some people get

gallery representation straight out of art school; people today are

finding galleries while they are in art school. I ended up waiting 13 or

14 years before I had my first New York show – but from there, the Met

[the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York] bought two paintings.

Maybe I was the tortoise, not the hare. The more I mature as an artist,

the more I am painting for myself. It’s great to get response from the

outside world – it’s always a minor miracle when someone is connected

to your work, or buys a painting; but I’d be painting even if no one did.

I have an interesting double life; I spend six months a year in New York

and six months in a very small town in Italy, called Pietrasanta, near

the coast. I’ve been doing it for 25 years. The knowledge that I won’t

be interrupted, not just for days but months, is a tremendous boon to

my development. Every year I try to surpass myself and make sure I

am not producing ‘Caio Fonseca paintings’ but something new that I

believe in and that is at the forefront of my research. Everyone who has

lived in a foreign country knows that being away from your language,

your familiar reference points does aid the wonderful isolation that an

artist feels. It’s an added purity to your days. I go to Italy to discover

new ideas – those are the hardest to find in New York, or anywhere

where you are diluted in your concentration. As for confidence – if you

don’t have it, you have to fake it. You have to go down into the studio

every day, even if you don’t feel you can paint. In New York, my studio

work would be at 60 per cent capacity of what I’m able to achieve in

Italy. But after six months of such intensity, New York is the perfect

antidote to that kind of isolation.

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Music is one of my biggest influences. I’ve played classical piano all my

life and, for the past two years, I have been studying, rather seriously,

composition with a professor in New York. That has really gotten into

my painting. It’s not so much the rhythm of music or the shapes of

instruments, but the inner workings, the counterpoints, how intervals

resolve themselves, how the architecture of melody might translate. I

do not listen to music when I paint. If I put on great music, it becomes

a distraction. If I put on horrible music, it’s a nightmare. And everything

else in the middle is an ode to mediocrity. I do play piano for a few

hours in the morning and that does set the day in an abstract mode.

When I paint, I need silence. It’s not just for concentration; it’s also that

I have a strange connection between sound and space so much so that

a yellow might have a higher pitch to me than another, and I need that

sound-spatial quality when I work.

This is not the kind of work that needs wall text or written explanations.

What it needs is for people to spend the first minute or two just

looking. Human beings can decipher these paintings without the use

of language. They want to explain themselves. Everything within the

work is interrelated. If you ‘travel’ through the painting, you’ll find that

there is spontaneity and structure, interplay between the two is what

I believe gives it the enduring value – which you can keep looking at,

which will keep revealing things about themselves over time.

Excerpted from a 2010 Interview with Caio Fonseca

PAINTING

10

Pietrasanta C10.6, 2010

mixed media on canvas

50 x 72 inches

12



42 x 62 inches

14

Pietrasanta P05.28, 2005

gouache on paper

30 x 42 inches

16



72 x 52 inches

18


gouache on paper

30 x 42 inches

20


gouache on paper

30 x 42 inches

22

Fifth Street C05.48, 2005


52 x 37 inches

24



42 x 62 inches

26


gouache on paper

30 x 42 inches

28

Fifth Street C05.9, 2005


65 x 84 inches

30



37 x 52 inches

32


gouache on paper

23 x 30 inches

34


gouache on paper

30 x 42 inches

36


gouache on paper

23 x 30 inches

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CAIO FONSECA

Caio Fonseca, American, born 1959, was raised in New York City. In 1978 he went

to Barcelona where he studied and painted until 1983. He moved to Pietrasanta

(Lucca) in 1985 where he worked until 1989. After two years in Paris, he returned to

New York and now divides his time between Pietrasanta and his studio in Manhattan

on East Fifth Street. His works are held in numerous public and private collections in

Europe and the United States.

ONE-PERSON EXHIBITIONS

2011 Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY

The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY

2010 Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hong Kong

Kayne Exhibition Space, Los Angeles, CA

Victoria Munroe Fine Art, Boston, MA

2009 Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, UK

2008 The Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY

2007 Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

David Floria Gallery, Aspen, CO

2005 Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, UK

2004 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

2003 Institut Valenciá de Arte Modern (IVAM), Valencia, Spain


Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle, WA

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2002 John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

2001 Douglas Udell Gallery, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle, WA

2000 Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, St. Louis, MO


1999 Robert Miller Gallery, New York, NY

University Art Gallery, University of California at San Diego, CA

Duke University Museum of Art, Durham, NC


Knoedler & Co., New York, NY

1996 Knoedler & Co., New York, NY

Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY

Meredith Long & Co., Houston, TX


1994 Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY

1993 Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY

1991 Galeria Anna Ricart, Barcelona, Spain

1985 Villa D’elatre, Lucca, Italy

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2008 “Contemporary Watercolors,” The Harrison Gallery, Williamstown, MA

2008 “Ojo Latino, la Mirada de un continente,” Santiago de Chile

2007 “Solstice,” David Floria Gallery, Aspen, CO

2006 “Sliding Scales,” Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York, NY

“Black + White,” Nathan Bernstein & Co, Ltd., New York, NY

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2005 “Cross Section,” Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

“Fuori Tema/Italian Feeling,” XIV Quadriennale di Roma, Rome, Italy

2003 “Drawing Modern: Works from the Agnes Gund Collection”, Cleveland

Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

2002 “New York Renaissance: Selections from the Whitney Museum of

American Art,” Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy

“Abstraction,” Winston Wächter Fine Art, Seattle, WA

2001 “Summer 2001,” Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

2000 “Painting,” Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

1999 “Processes,” Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton and Vancouver, Canada

“Acquisitions,” John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, CA

“Abstraction,” Robert Kidd Gallery, Birmingham, MI

“Abstract Painting,” Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY

1997 “Basically Black & White,” Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY

“Purely Painting,” Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, NY

“Contemporary Masterworks,” Knoedler & Co., New York, NY

1996 “The New York Scene 1996,” Gotlands Konst Museum, Visby, Sweden

1995 “Under Glass,” Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY

“Essence & Persuasion: The Power of Black & White,” The Anderson

Gallery, Buffalo, NY

1994 “About Color,” Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY

1993 “Essentials,” Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY

“Summer Invitational,” David Beitzel Gallery, New York, NY

CATALOGS AND BOOKS

2010 Caio Fonseca, Paintings 2009-2010 (hardbound, 64 page exhibition

catalogue). Los Angeles: Kayne Exhibition Space.

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2007 Caio Fonseca, Paintings 2006-2007 (hardbound, 72 page exhibition

catalogue). New York: Paul Kasmin Gallery.

2005 Caio Fonseca, New Paintings (hardbound, 71 page exhibition catalogue).

London: Ben Brown Fine Arts.

Inventions: Recent Paintings by Caio Fonseca (hardbound, 88 page book

accompanying museum exhibition). Washington D.C.: Corcoran Gallery

of Art.

2003 Kunitz, Daniel. Caio Fonseca: Paintings, (hardbound, 201 page book

accompanying museum exhibition). Valencia, Spain: IVAM.

2002 New York Renaissance: Highlights from the Whitney Museum of American

Art (exhibition catalogue). Milan, Italy: Palazzo Reale.

Caio Fonseca (exhibition catalogue). New York, NY: Paul Kasmin Gallery.

Caio Fonseca (exhibition catalogue). San Francisco, CA: John Berggruen

Gallery.

1999 Caio Fonseca (exhibition catalogue). San Francisco, CA: John Berggruen

Gallery

1998 Di Piero, W.S. Caio Fonseca (exhibition catalog). New York, NY: Knoedler

& Co.

1996 The New York Scene 1996, Gotlands Konst Museum Catalog. 1996, Sweden.

Wilkin, Karen. Caio Fonseca (exhibition catalogue). San Francisco, CA:

John Berggruen Gallery.

1994 Adams, Brooks. Caio Fonseca (exhibition catalogue). New York, NY:

Charles Cowles Gallery.

Wilkin, Karen. Caio Fonseca (exhibition catalogue). New York, NY: Charles

Cowles Gallery.

1991 Giralt-Miracle, Daniel. Caio Fonseca (exhibition catalogue). Barcelona,

Spain: Galeria Anna Ricart.

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SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

The Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York

Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

The North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina

The Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio

The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, Texas

Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

The United States Embassy, Vienna, Austria

Cesar Pelli, architect. Reagan National Airport Washington D.C., Mural commission.

Renzo Piano, architect. Bovis Lend Lease, Aurora Place, Sydney, Australia,

Mural commission.

Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Art, Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, California

Goldman Sachs, New York, New York

The Microsoft Collection, Seattle, Washington

IVAM, Valencia, Spain

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

C AIO FONSEC A20 may - 10 july 2011

Tayloe Piggott Gallery62 South Glenwood Street, PO Box 1435Jackson, Wyoming 83001Tel 307 733 0555www.tayloepiggottgallery.com

Catalog designed by Ali Scheier

Printed by Northern Printers

Interview by Yvonne LaiOriginally published in Hong Kong’s Post Magazine

October 31, 2010

Photographs by Alan Zindman, Stefano Baroni,

Ellen Page Wilson, Leslie Hassler

All rights reserved

Tayloe Piggott Gallery

Caio Fonseca Catalogue

Documents

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