Candida Alvarez is an artist whose primary materials are painting and drawing. Her abstractions are composed from a personal narrative that is captured through mobile photography. Beginning with a collage-like exchange, Alvarez creates a space that eventually unfolds into drawings, resulting in several layers overlapping. The works evolve through an intuitive process where color becomes the pictorial architect between shape and line. Abstraction becomes a sense of wonder that tracks the formal play and lives within Alvarez’s compositions.
Alvarez (b.1955, Brooklyn, NY) received her MFA from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT in 1997. Recent solo exhibitions include Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL (2024); moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2023, 2020); Gavlak, Palm Beach, FL (2019); Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL (2017); Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL (2012); New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT (1996); and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY (1992). Notable group exhibitions include Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2022-2023), and ICA Boston (2023); no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2022); To Weave the Sky: Textile Abstractions from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio23, Miami, FL (2023-2024); The Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles (2023-2024); Galerie Lelong, New York, NY (2023); School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL (2022); Z33 Gallery, Belgium (2021-2022); El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2021); DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL (2018); Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO (2017); and The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (1990). Alvarez will present a major solo exhibition at El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY in 2025, and is included in several major LATINx-focused shows, such as El Vaivén: 21st Century Art of Puerto Rico and its Diaspora at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2025); LatinX Painting Today, Buffalo AKG, Buffalo, NY (2026); and Diasporican Abstraction: Identities Beyond Representation, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR (2026).
Public collections include the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Peréz Art Museum Miami, FL; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Denver Art Museum, CO; El Museo de Barrio, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Seattle Art Museum, WA; LUMA Foundation, Arles, FR; and DePaul Art Museum, IL. Recent awards and fellowships include the 2024 Trellis Art Fund Grant, 2022 Ford Mellon Foundation Latinx Artist Fellowship, 2022 Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Art, the Helen Frankenthaler Award for painting in 2021, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2019. In 2023, Alvarez was artist in residence at the LUMA Foundation Arles, France and at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, ME. As a celebrated educator, Alvarez taught Painting for 25 years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is now Professor Emeritus, and was the Fall 2024 Alex Katz Chair in Painting at The Cooper Union in New York, NY. She lives and works between Chicago, IL and Baroda, MI.