George Washington Painting
By
This artwork of President George Washington by Miguel Zapata was commissioned by Mrs. Laura W. Bush for the Presidential Reception Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
Measurements:
- Unframed: 17 1/2 inches x 22 inches
- Framed: 24 inches x 29 inches (+$250)
MADE IN THE USA
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Miguel Zapata was born in 1940 in the old town of Cuenca, Spain. Zapata spent his formative years in Madrid, Barcelona, and Paris. The artist established his Texas studio in Dallas in 1991, and spent several months each year working in the U.S., while his principal studio was in Madrid.
Zapata acknowledged his debt to older Spanish painters such as Antoni Tàpies, Manuel Millares, Antonio Saura, and Luis Feito, who led the subsequent generations to abstraction in the 1950s. With his distinct style, Zapata established his reputation in the mid-eighties as one of the leading artists of contemporary Spain. Zapata was an artist who chose to work in the medium of history. He recouped images from the past in his works – often the masterpieces and architectural elements of the Renaissance – only to personify them by manipulations and interventions. He manipulated, for instance, a carefully “reproduced” historical frieze by intentionally introducing fissures or defacing it in what results as an abstraction. He intervened by applying a bold brushstroke on a carefully, but not necessarily faithfully, resurrected Renaissance masterpiece, thereby boldly announcing his authorship. In thus appropriating images from the past, Zapata always experimented with different media. The richly textured surface of his bas relief – which places his works somewhere between painting and sculpture – can be made up of cardboard, rag, silica mixed with varnish, plaster mold, or metal plate. The significance of his effort is as much in the end result as in the diverse means used to attain it; namely, the confounding of the established categories of painting and sculpture.