Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. is pleased to present an installation of works by two highly original artists who developed a strong pictorial attachment to New York City, incorporating its urban landscape in their work in different media and through their own formal means.
Argentine artist Sarah Grilo (1919-2007) moved to New York City in 1962 after being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. It was at this critical point that the artist broke from her background in Concrete abstraction and began to incorporate formal elements from the NYC landscape. From the graffiti that ran rampant throughout the City at that time, to the traces of letters and numbers from deteriorating signs and posters, Grilo covered her works with compulsively repetitive, erased, and re-written spontaneous scribbles, all sustained by a hyper-chromatic sensibility ranging from the most resplendent of golds to the deepest of violets, and from the loudest of turquoise and fuchsias, to the palest of yellows and sky blues. In 1970, Grilo left her urban muse to move to Europe where she lived the remainder of her life.
Lidya Buzio (1948-2014), the Uruguayan American ceramist, moved to New York City in the early 1970s, and fell in love with downtown New York. Her new urban environment inspired her to create her signature New York Cityscapes through her work with clay. Buzio’s fascinations were downtown New York’s evocative rooflines, its cast iron architecture, and water towers. Known for her conflation of sculpture and painting, Buzio went beyond the medium of pottery to create her very own genre. Using special pigments which she mixed herself, the artist drew and painted directly onto her unfired works and burnished her pieces before firing, resulting in the unique luminosity and distinctive hues that characterize her artworks.
Like two ships in the night inspired by different elements of New York City’s urban aesthetic, both artists created lyrical compositions that enable us to witness their process: from Grilo’s drips of paint and gestural markings, to Buzio’s luminous hues and original use of the medium of clay.
Picasso (ca.1970), oil on canvas / Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York
Installation view of "The City as Muse: Works by Lidya Buzio and Sarah Grilo," at Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York, 2021
Installation view of "The City as Muse: Works by Lidya Buzio and Sarah Grilo," at Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York, 2021
Algo por decir (1985), oil on canvas / Cecilia de Torres, Ltd., New York
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