Another in a series of exhibits by significant Mexican artists will open at the Efren Gonzalez Gallery in Ajijic on Saturday, March 7, 4 p.m.
T
he show will feature the work of prominent Chicago artist Esperanza Gama, a Jalisco native who is now celebrated in the United States for her impressive collections of work featuring Latina women. Gama received formal art instruction at the University of Guadalajara and was a professor of painting and drawing at the Cabañas Cultural Institute before striking out to study printmaking in Paris and then designing interiors that featured her art in Marseille and Cannes. She later studied Chinese painting in Tokyo.
One of Gama’s major solo exhibits, “Mujeres de Cuatro Siglos,” portrayed artistic biographies that excavate the history of important Mexican women of the last four centuries creatively.
In recent years Gama, has returned to her roots, creating drawings and paintings on traditional Mexican amate, the richly textured bark paper such as was created by her Oaxacan grandparents. Her work on amate and her continued exploration of modern Mexican women has been vastly popular in the exhibits she has mounted in a variety of locations.
In addition to painting and drawing, Gama thrives on graphic arts. She has created illustrations for books of poetry and was the official artist for the National Council of La Raza’s annual conference in Washington, DC, and for the annual Celebration Awards of the Latino Institute in Chicago. She has participated in dozens of group and solo exhibits around the world.
The Gama exhibit came about thanks to a recently cemented relationship between Gonzalez and Carlos Tortolero, president of the Chicago-based National Museum of Mexican Art.