onedayi'llturnthecornerandi'llbereadyforit

Beauty triumphs tragedy in this exquisite new work by Puerto Rican artist David Anthony Cruz. Through intensely vibrant color and richly detailed patterning, Mr. Cruz addresses the tragedy of hate crime on the rise in our communities. This alarming statistic lends gravity to the new painting, a tour-de-force of socio-political portraiture. Cruz’s painting descends from a long tradition of group portraiture, most notably by the Dutch Golden Age masters Rembrandt van Rijn and Frans Hals. Their monumental paintings, such as Rembrandt’s 1642 The Night Watch, depicted important civic organizations in Amsterdam and Haarlem. They imparted each sitter with a distinct personality and physiognomy.  Like his artistic brethren from the past, Mr. Cruz indeed memorializes the status and appearance of his sitters, but he has updated the methodology and raison d’être of the genre.

In the past, formal group portraiture lauded the elite or those wealthy enough to commission paintings. Royalty, aristocracy, or military and religious heroes were the usual fare. However, Mr. Cruz set out to aggrandize the victimized, most often on because of their gender or the color of their skin. All four persons in the ULCC painting were under the age of thirty when they lost their lives on account of hate and violence, sadly occurring in the state of Texas. Mr. Cruz does not necessarily know his sitters personally, but often reads about their fate and is moved to celebrate their lives in a permanent fashion. He transforms their tragedies into art. In Texas Girls, painted this year, Cruz inserts florals native to Texas and outfits his sitters as divas, sporting glamorous attire and lavish accessories. He begs the viewer to admire them rather than simply mourn. He asks us to remember them and to meditate on what could have been.

David Anthony Cruz grew up in Philadelphia. He matriculated at the Pratt Institute with a BFA in painting and at Yale University with an MFA. His burgeoning talent has been recognized by fellowships and awards that include The Franklin Furnace Fund Award, The Urban Artist Initiative Award, the Queer Mentorship Fellowship, and the Neubauer Faculty Fellowship at Tufts University. Mr. Cruz has most recently exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art, and Workspace Residency, Project For Empty Space’s Social Impact Residency, and BRICworkspace. Cruz’s work has been admired in notable group and solo exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery; El Museo del Barrio; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; and the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio Texas. 

Sally Metzler, Ph.D., Director of the Art Collection