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Coral Gables Museum Hosts A Closing Reception For The Exhibit “Julio Larraz: The Kingdom We Carry Inside”
The Coral Gables Museum in partnership with the Julio Larraz Foundation, a non-profit organization committed to preserving, promoting and transmitting the legacy of the prolific artist, hosts a closing reception to celebrate Julio Larraz's work on view at the Museum and bids farewell to the retrospective exhibition before it moves to a new home.
The reception held on April 27th at 6pm includes a Curator's Tour led by Coral Gables Museum's Chief Curator and curator of the show, Yuneikys Villalonga, and a special video screening including a new documentary on the work of Julio Larraz, Astral Flight (2021), produced by Ari Larraz, Laura Furcic, and Las Animas Films. This will also be an opportunity to purchase the book Julio Larraz: The Kingdom We Carry Inside, the most comprehensive publication on the artist to date, published by Rizzoli, New York, as well as a selection of serigraphs and posters featuring highlight paintings of the artist.
Artist Julio Larraz (b. Havana, Cuba, 1944) immigrated to the United States with his family in the early sixties. At just 16-years-old, he pursued art as a means of expression. With time and talent, he developed an impressive body of work in different mediums, from political cartoons, to painting and sculpture, becoming one of today's most influential figures in Latin American art. Throughout a career of six decades, institutional recognition has gone hand in hand with the admiration and following of colleagues and many younger painters from all over the world that praise his mastery of technique, color and light; and the poetry and subtlety of his work.
The exhibition "Julio Larraz: The Kingdom We Carry Inside" gathers works that span from Larraz's early days in New York, as a caricaturist for major newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vogue, to the drawings, paintings, and sculptures realized in New Mexico, Paris and Florence, as well as in Miami, where the artist currently lives and works. Pieces are drawn from private and public collections, as well as from the Larraz family collection and archives, to represent all themes, mediums, and key periods of the artist's life and oeuvre.
"Among the selection, there are important works in the artist's life and career, such as his 1969 depictions of spacecraft Apollo 11's launch from Cape Kennedy, while being one of the few selected artists to witness the moment when humans first landed on the moon; or the painting that represents Larraz in the CINTAS Foundation's collection after a 1975 Cintas Award," said Coral Gables Museum curator, Yuni Villalonga.
"This is a bittersweet moment and a special exhibition dear to my heart," said the accomplished painter, sculptor, and draftsman, Julio Larraz. "To see my work and growth throughout the years showcased in this holistic way was incredible to relive. I thank Coral Gables Museum for curating a beautiful show of my work throughout the last six decades."
Executive Director Elvis Fuentes added, “We are proud to have organized Julio Larraz’s first museum retrospective exhibition in the United States in collaboration with the Julio Larraz Foundation, and we are making the show available to travel. His love of storytelling and rich imagination makes his art an inspiration for all, from artists to the public in general, which is probably why we have had record numbers of attendance. So, I agree that it is bittersweet to close this exhibition, but we will have his work in our permanent collection thanks to a generous donation.”
