Paco
Felici
Featured
RaZoO GaLLeRy Artist
About Nationally Acclaimed folk artist
Paco Felici
"My
subjects are intrinsically American icons."
Paco Felici (born
in 1970) is becoming one of the more popular self-taught American
artists of his generation. His whimsical paintings are regarded
as an important crossover between U.S. pop art and the Latin American
folk art tradition. He is widely collected and his almost cartoon-like
work is featured in a growing number of galleries in his home
state of Texas as well as in California, North Carolina, Minnesota,
and Tennessee. Now his humorous, colorfully decorative
and easily-recognizable artwork can be found in Florida
at Ft. Lauderdale's RaZoO
GaLLeRy.
In the last two
years his art was featured at the FolkFest Art Fair and Exhibition
in Atlanta, Georgia and in other important venues. Some renditions
of his more popular paintings of musicians are on exhibit
at the House
of Blues
music venue in Myrtle Beach and many other music venues around
the country.
Paco's artwork
was featured on the cover of the July 2001 issue of the "Texas Observer" and he has been
commissioned to paint the book cover and illustrate --"Humor
Me: An Anthology of Humor by Writers of Color, edited by John
McNally"
published by the University of Iowa Press.
His colorful works
have established a loyal and growing following-serious collectors
of Southern folk art such as Mose Tolliver, Ruby Williams, Joe
Light, Howard Finster and Richard Burnside, as well as countless
others who appreciate religious and vernacular Latin
American folk art. He is also known for painting fanciful portraits
on commission RaZoO
GaLLeRy
is offering an opportunity to buy his highly collectable art at
modest prices.
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FELICI'S
FACES
by
John Ewing
'Outsider' is the
current label for self-taught artists, but it's an odd fit for
one as cosmopolitan as Paco Felici. Born in Brazil to Italian
parents, the 32-year-old painter grew up in Mexico, Algeria, Canada,
Egypt, and Texas. He brings this worldly point of view to the
deceptively simple works. Though self-taught, the artwork of Austin-based
Felici is more populist than folk. His large, cartoon portraits
ease the tensions of cultural difference with their bright colors
and uniform style.
Felici's best-known
work is the spiky-crowned Miss Liberty, "Libertad."
She is a young, hip Lady Liberty whose multi-cultural familia
includes others like "Tio Sam", "Gorbachev",
and "El Rey" (Elvis) that could be her kinfolk
as well, with bulging eyes, full lips, and other distinctive features
executed in Felici's graphic shorthand. Though repetitive, Paco's
simple flat-face formula is surprisingly expressive and thickly
outlined with subversive humor. Paco's "African
American Gothic," for instance, recasts Grant Wood's
classic painting with the contentious, black icons of Aunt Jemima
and Uncle Ben.
Though less familiar
to viewers, "Krispy Kreme" also uses the portrait
format to foreground an often-overlooked subject. In his uniform
and cap, the young man is Felici's nod to the African Americans
pictured in the kitchen backgrounds of old photographs that decorate
the chain of donut shops. Again, the theme of liberty is a subtext
that Felici addresses with the special insight of an immigrant.
"Liberty for everyone in our society is messy and imperfect,"
notes the artist, "but it's something fundamental that we
aspire to, overtly or not"
Made
quickly with latex house paint on plywood, Felici's portraits
embrace the materials of traditional folk art, but the more contemporary
influences of pop art and global advertising shape their content.
That may be the reason why populist phenoms like MTV and Oprah
Winfrey's Harpo Studios have purchased Felici's art for their
corporate collections. Despite references to more mainstream figures
like the late Tupac Shakur, Felici claims a reverence for true
outsider artists like the great Mose Tolliver and Howard Finster.
Straddling both the mainstream pop and folk camps, the artist
is comfortable selling his work in folk galleries as well as through
"fine art" galleries.
Some folk
traditions can't be beat, like taking the art right to the people.
Felici's biggest score to date owes to one lucky afternoon showing
his paintings in a friend's Blue Star parking space. A writer
for the Texas Observer wandered past, and the photos
she snapped of Felici and his work appeared witha cover story
on San Antonio's art scene. That issue made its way to the University
of Iowa Press, whose editors took the trouble to find Felici and
commissioned him to illustrate Humor Me: An Anthology of Humor
by Writers of Color. What's the lesson? If you are hung up
on categories like insider and outsider, the joke is on you.
John Ewing 2002
For
more information on pricing, availability or commissions contact
:
RaZoo GaLLery
webmaster@razoogallery.com
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