The Need to Connect

     While doing a virtual tour at the Museum of Latin American Art, I came across the exhibition called "Victor Hugo Zayas: The River Paintings." This solo exhibition portrays the art piece called Grid Series 16 by Victor Hugo Zayas. The Museum gives a short introduction to Zayas and his work as it states:

"The Museum of Latin American Art presents a solo exhibition of new work by Los Angeles artist Victor Hugo Zayas. This survey presentation features a recent, soulful body of work born from the artist’s industrial studio on the bank of the L.A. River. These extraordinary works constitute a time-lapse portrait of Los Angeles’s infrastructural heart, capturing its movement, moods and light through changing seasons, smog, fires, riots, night, and fog."

Victor Hugo Zayas, Grid Series 16 (2015)

    Zayas states that one of the reasons he decided to use the rivers as his focus in paintings is because they give us life. He explains that we have always made civilizations by rivers because they give us a vital source to survive. He also explains that there is a lot of concrete in the world and that we don’t take out time to appreciate the river and its way of calming us. He was inspired to paint the Grid Series when he was on a plane and looked out of the window. There he saw the whole city interconnected with one another, which looks like a grid. The same grid can be found on the surface of a river as the body moves and ripples. 

    The article titled "Above the Grid" by Susan Greenberg talks about an artist who also paints grids, Yvonne Jacquette. At the beginning of the article, it goes into how Jacquette started painting aerial views after she did some sketches looking out of a plane's window. She does aerials of Manhattan where she painted the art shown in the picture to the left. It also talks about other artists and their use of the grid style of painting. But, it mainly focuses on Jacquette and how each of her paintings is her own interpretation of the landscape. And similar to Zayas, Jacquette also paints in a modernist way. It states, “Their appearance recalls the long history of the grid as a central modernist trope throughout much of the twentieth century” (Greenberg 91). Grids created by modern artists envoke not order, but poetry throughout their art. As Zayas states, "let the art speak for itself." To search this article, I use the terms "(grids in art)(river)."

Southwest View from the World Trade Center II

    The reason I chose this article is that both Zayas and Jacquette were inspired to paint in a grid style because they were up in planes looking down at the landscape below. Both also paint in a style that is modern, meaning that they have cast aside traditional methods of painting to include their own. Also, the way they interconnect concrete with water is also shown in the article as it states, “Nature and city alternate as we move up the vertiginous canvas” (Greenberg 90). Zayas's art, like Jacquette's, intertwines the river with the grid of a city. In the art shown to the left, we can see the intertwining of the skyscrapers with the body of water above. Both of these artists' art show the connection between the city and water. My class theme of religion does not really fit into the connection of city and river, but I can say that Zayas stating that throughout history we humans have made civilizations along the river because it is a life source, reminded me of how these waters were so important, that they were made into gods. In plenty of mythology, there would be river gods or goddesses who, if angered, would cause droughts or floods. Either way, the river has been an important factor in our survival, and its importance is beautifully portrayed in both Zayas and Jacquette's artwork.

Here is a video of Victor Hugo Zayas explaining why he paints grids and what inspired him to do so:

Works Cited:

Greenberg, Susan. "Above the Grid." Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, 2004, pp. 84-91, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40514643. Accessed 11 May 2022.

“Victor Hugo Zayas: The River Paintings - Molaa: Museum of Latin American Art.” MOLAA, molaa.org/victor-hugo-zayas-the-river-paintings.