Works by Hugo Crosthwaite Acquired by Two Important Museums
Sunday May 8, 2005
Adrianna Herrera T., El Nuevo Herald

The career of Hugo Crosthwaite, a 33-year-old artist from Tijuana, Mexico, whose first major exhibition is taking place at this time at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, looks destined to skyrocket in the world of contemporary art.

Recently the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego added a 16-foot work by Hugo to their permanent collection. The drawing will form part of a great collection in 2006. During Merrill Lynch's art fair, arteAméricas, Virginia Miller placed another of Crosthwaite's works in the permanent collection of the Museum of Latin American Art (MoLAA) in Long Beach, California.

Crosthwaite has been nominated for the Artes Mundi Prize, which is given in Wales, United Kingdom, to artists who have received recognition for the quality of their work in their own country and that are receiving an international reputation. This year the prize will be granted to artists who explore ideas related to humanity.

According to Miller, a veteran with 36 years in the business of selling art in South Florida, the present exhibition could become historic. "Hugo Crosthwaite has an extraordinary opportunity to become a very important artist on the international scene. He has a magnificent technique, a concentration and a determination that are absolute, as well as an extraordinary capacity to integrate present events and personal experiences in his works," she says.

The present exhibition, which is taking place at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, entitled Maniera Obscura/In a Dark Manner: 1998-2005, includes one of the biggest drawings in the world, a monumental mural of 8 x 36 feet.

Like all of Crosthwaite's work, the enormous mural was made completely in pencil, that professionals prefer to call "graphite" - or pencil and charcoal. "I love the immediacy and tactile condition of drawing, to break the white surface with images of my own personal narrative," says Crosthwaite.

When combining classical imagery with abstract elements, he considers that each work is "its own vision in which history, mythology and the abstract are combined."

Miller considers Crosthwaite to be an anachronism, a contemporary artist that produces works on a grand scale utilizing a 19th century technique. Among the artists who have inspired his work are Francisco Goya, Eugene Delacroix, Theodore Gericault and Arnold Bocklin.

Works by this artist have been included in the XII Bienal Rufino Tamayo, at the Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art in Mexico City and Mujeres de Juarez: Art Against Crime, an exhibition of works at the Hispanic Museum of Nevada in Las Vegas, organized of artists protesting against the violence against women in Juarez, Mexico.

In 2003, the city of Los Angeles asked Crosthwaite to participate in the mural project The Wall-Las Memorias, a monument created to educate the Latin community in the city about AIDS and to honor the members of the community that have died as a result of this illness.