SOLSTICE
2007 | Oil on canvas | Óleo sobre lienzo
48" x 68" | 122 x 172 cm.
Ofill Echevarría
OFILL ECHEVARRÍA EDITIONS
OFILL ECHEVARRÍA born in Havana, Cuba, in 1972, lives and works in New York City. He studied at the Elementary Art School ’20 de Octubre’ and the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, both in Havana. He received a BFA from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in 1991.
As a student at the elementary school, also known as School of 23 & C, he founded together with some of his best friends the controversially famous Havanan art collective Arte-Calle [Street-Art] Group. The group’s emergence was pivotal to the Cuban art scene of the late eighties, producing a series of Murals, Graffitis, Happenings and Performances between 1986 and 1988.
In 1991, with an invitation letter from the Museo Estudio Diego Rivera, Echevarría travelled to Mexico City, where he live for ten years showing his work mainly at Nina Menocal Gallery. In 2002, after having presented ‘Íconos/Reflections’, its first solo show at Praxis International Art, also in Mexico City, he relocated to Miami. In 2005 he moved to New York.
Since 2002, first represented by Praxis Mexico, which in turn became Alfredo Ginocchio Gallery a few years later, Echevarría has exhibited his work broadly all over Latin America and the United States of America both individually and participating in many international art fairs and group shows. He has recently begun to exhibit in Europe as well. His work is included in major public and private collections.
In 2013 Un-Gyve Press published El Mundo de Los Vivos | The Real World, with artworks from 2001 to 2012 accompanied by a text of essays from leading American and Cuban art experts. The book launch was supported by exhibits in Mexico City at the Alfredo Ginocchio Gallery and The Carriage House Center for The Arts in New York.
Echevarría’s style and technique draws from the tradition of Photography, Documentary Film and Painting. He is widely recognized by his series of paintings where he depicts business men, as well as urban life — still and in motion, and explores philosophical issues on those matters.
Ofill Echevarría’s body of work includes a series of what he has called, Moving Art Pictures with regard to the city of New York; a project that has been part of the artist’s pictorial exhibitions since 2011, although it was officially presented throughout 2013. He is currently working mainly on two different pictorial projects, as well as in the development of the A Picture In Motion project, both theoretically and technologically.
Ofill Echevarría in his studio. Echevarria's fascination with motion in cityscapes has its origins while the artist was still living in Mexico City, where he developed a series of oil paintings on canvas regarding urban life that later was exhibited at the Multicultural Center of the URI, Kingston. His style and technique draws from the tradition of photography, documentary film and painting. Additionally, particularly in those works where motion matters, he employs a wet-on-wet painting technique.
The Gabarron Foundation New York and The Cuban Cultural Center of New York Present Echevarría's El Mundo de los Vivos | The Real World (Un-Gyve Press). Groups 2012 oil on canvas. The book is a thematic monograph of the work of Cuban-American realist painter and multimedia artist, Ofill Echevarria, exploring urban life -- still and in motion. The 125 page clothbound hardcover with text contributed by Carol Damian, Emilio Garcia Montiel and Alejandro Robles, translated by Marilu Menendez is now available online: ISBN: 978-0-9829198-1-1. (PRNewsFoto/Un-Gyve Limited) (PRNewsFoto/UN-GYVE LIMITED)
Ofill Echevarría in Berlin.
