Luis Gutierrez is an American artist based in Los Gatos, California, USA.

Biography

Luis Gutierrez was born in

Pittsburg, California Pittsburg is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. It is an industrial suburb located on the southern shore of the Suisun Bay in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, and is part of the Sacramento–San Joaquin R ...

to a Mexican-American family, in 1933. He received an A.A. degree from

Diablo Valley College Diablo Valley College (DVC) is a public community college with campuses in Pleasant Hill and San Ramon in Contra Costa County, California. DVC is one of three public community colleges in the Contra Costa Community College District (along with ...

in 1954; a B.A. degree from

San Jose State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a public university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the oldest public university on the West Coast and the founding campus of the California State University (CSU) sy ...

in 1957; and an M.F.A. degree from the Instituto San Miguel Allende in 1958. He has taught at Pittsburg High School and

San Jose City College San José City College (SJCC) is a public community college in San Jose, California. Founded in 1921, SJCC is located in the West San Jose neighborhood of Fruitdale. History The college was founded in 1921, opening its doors to students in Sep ...

. Graduating from high school and having won a

Bank of America The Bank of America Corporation (often abbreviated BofA or BoA) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The bank ...

merit award in art, Gutierrez enrolled at Diablo Valley College in 1952 and was mentored by an art teacher, who steered him towards obtaining a bachelor's degree from San Jose State University. Supported by the patronage of further art professionals, Gutierrez finished his graduate studies at the Instituto Allende in

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

’s

San Miguel de Allende San Miguel de Allende () is the principal city in the municipality of San Miguel de Allende, located in the far eastern part of Guanajuato, Mexico. A part of the Bajío region, the city lies from Mexico City, 86 km (53 mi) from Queré ...

, an outpost of

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

art instructors, GI Bill students, and international modernism. There, Gutierrez continued working through the influence of Picasso and

Matisse Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (; 31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954) was a French visual artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a drawing, draughtsman, printmaking, printmaker, and sculptur ...

. Returning to San Jose, he took a teaching job at San Jose City College, where he inspired students with unorthodox assignments, such as making a piece based on a shameful secret, or drawing with the left hand, so as to circumvent the censorious left brain and its obedient right hand. Gutierrez assimilated aspects of Abstract Expressionism, the

Bay Area Figuration The Bay Area Figurative Movement (also known as the Bay Area Figurative School, Bay Area Figurative Art, Bay Area Figuration, and similar variations) was a mid-20th Century art movement made up of a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area wh ...

, Beat, Funk, and Pop into his practice. Gutierrez retired in 1995.

Selected solo and two-person exhibitions

1958: Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
1960: Saint Mary's College,

Moraga, California Moraga is a town in Contra Costa County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The town is named in honor of Joaquín Moraga, member of the famed Californio family. As of 2020, Moraga had a total population of 16,870 people. Moraga is ...

1961: San Jose State College, San Jose, California
1971: De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, California
1973:

Sonoma State University Sonoma State University (SSU, Sonoma State, or Sonoma) is a public university in Rohnert Park in Sonoma County, California, US. It is one of the smallest members of the California State University (CSU) system. Sonoma State offers 92 Bachelor's ...

Art Gallery,

Rohnert Park, California Rohnert Park is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States, located approximately north of San Francisco. The population at the 2020 United States Census was 44,390. It is an early planned city and is the sister city of Hashimoto in ...

1974:

Chico State University California State University, Chico, or commonly, Chico State, is a public university in Chico, California. Founded in 1887, it is the second oldest campus in the California State University system. As of the fall 2020 semester, the university had ...

Art Gallery,

Chico, California Chico ( ; Spanish for "little") is the most populous city in Butte County, California. Located in the Sacramento Valley region of Northern California, the city had a population of 101,475 in the 2020 census, reflecting an increase from 86,18 ...

1979: Mexican Museum, San Francisco, California
1989: Lucy Berman Gallery, Palo Alto, California
1994: Lucy Berman Gallery,

Palo Alto, California Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

2000: Tercera Gallery, Los Gatos, California
2007:

Triton Museum of Art The Triton Museum of Art is a contemporary art museum located at 1505 Warburton Avenue in Santa Clara, California. History The museum was founded in 1965 in San Jose, California, by rancher, lawyer and art patron W. Robert Morgan and his wife J ...

Santa Clara, California Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...

2010: Axis Gallery, San Jose, California
2011: Togonon Gallery,

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

Selected group exhibitions

1960-1961: Oakland Museum,

Oakland, CA Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...

1960-1964: San Francisco Museum of Art (now SFMOMA), San Francisco, CA
1963: Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California
1963:

Palace of the Legion of Honor The Legion of Honor, formally known as the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, is an art museum in San Francisco, California. Located in Lincoln Park, the Legion of Honor is a component of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which al ...

, San Francisco, California
1965:

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

Krannert Art Museum The Krannert Art Museum (KAM) is a fine art museum located at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Champaign, Illinois, United States. It has of space devoted to all periods of art, dating from ancient Egypt to contemporary photography ...

Champaign, Illinois Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metro ...

1965–1966:

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

1972:

Oakland Museum The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA (formerly the Oakland Museum) is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located adjacent to Oak Street, 10th Street, and 11th Street in Oakland, Cal ...

and

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

1973: San Jose Museum of Modern Art, San Jose, California
1976: Bell Chicago Gallery,

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

; Witte Memorial Museum,

San Antonio, Texas ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_t ...

; De Cordova Museum,

Lincoln, Massachusetts Lincoln is a town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. The population was 7,014 according to the 2020 United States Census, including residents of Hanscom Air Force Base that live within town limits. The town, loc ...

;

Illinois State Museum The Illinois State Museum features the life, land, people and art of the State of Illinois. The headquarters museum is located on Spring and Edwards Streets, one block southwest of the Illinois State Capitol, in Springfield. There are three satell ...

, Springfield, Illinois; The Mexican Museum, San Francisco, California; Boise Gallery of Art,

Boise, Idaho Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown ar ...

1976: Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery,

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz ( Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the county seat and largest city of Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 62,956. Situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay, Santa Cruz is a po ...

1983: San Jose City College Art Gallery, San Jose, California, Art Faculty Exhibition
2002: Triton Museum, Santa Clara, California

Awards

1962 James D. Phelan Award, San Francisco, California
1962 Ford Foundation Purchase Award, New York
1966

Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation was founded in 1918 by Louis Comfort Tiffany to operate his estate, Laurelton Hall, in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. It was designed to be a summer retreat for artists and craftspeople. In 1946 the estate ...

Grant,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

References

*''Contemporary American Painting and Sculpture, 1965'', exhibition catalog, University of Illinois, Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, Illinois. *Quirarte, Jacinto. ''The Humble Way: The Art of Mexican-America, Humble Oil Company'', 1970, Vol. IX, No. 2. The University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas. *Quirarte, Jacinto. ''Mexican American Artists'', 1973, The University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas.

External links

Togonon Gallery {{DEFAULTSORT:Gutierrez, Luis 1933 births Living people People from Pittsburg, California Mexican artists San Jose State University alumni Instituto Allende alumni American artists of Mexican descent