Emilio Cruz
(1938–2004)A painter, poet, playwright, performance artist, and musician, Emilio Cruz spent his career investigating the human experience.
Biography
Emilio Cruz's visual arts practice, which applied Expressionism to figuration in fantastical and allegorical scenes, evolved to reflect his study of various philosophies, religions, and natural and social sciences.
Born in New York City, Cruz spent his early years in the Bronx and Harlem. His father, a trained artist, was his first art teacher. After high school, Cruz worked as a commercial artist while taking night classes at the Art Students League. In the later 1950s, Cruz was introduced to the work of contemporary New York avant-garde artists working largely in abstraction and spent time in the art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he studied under Seong Moy and formed friendships with Bob Thompson, Franz Kline, and Charles Olsen.
After receiving a John Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship in Rome during the mid-1960s, Cruz settled in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he met jazz musicians and participated in experimental theater events. As a visiting artist with the Missouri Arts Council in Saint Louis from 1968 to 1969, Cruz was involved with the Black Artists Group. In 1976, with his wife, Patricia, Cruz established Spectacle, Inc., a multimedia theater production company bringing together poetry, painting, movement, film, and music. From 1970 to 1983, he taught painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then returned to New York City, where he taught at various institutions.
In 1987 The Studio Museum in Harlem mounted Emilio Cruz: Spilled Nightmares, Revelations, and Reflections, a solo exhibition that included Thanksgiving and Other Holidays (1986). Since the 1980s the Museum has featured Cruz’s work in a number of group exhibitions.
Emilio Cruz
(1938–2004)A painter, poet, playwright, performance artist, and musician, Emilio Cruz spent his career investigating the human experience.
Pillage of Folly, 1989
Biography
Emilio Cruz's visual arts practice, which applied Expressionism to figuration in fantastical and allegorical scenes, evolved to reflect his study of various philosophies, religions, and natural and social sciences.
Born in New York City, Cruz spent his early years in the Bronx and Harlem. His father, a trained artist, was his first art teacher. After high school, Cruz worked as a commercial artist while taking night classes at the Art Students League. In the later 1950s, Cruz was introduced to the work of contemporary New York avant-garde artists working largely in abstraction and spent time in the art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he studied under Seong Moy and formed friendships with Bob Thompson, Franz Kline, and Charles Olsen.
After receiving a John Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship in Rome during the mid-1960s, Cruz settled in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he met jazz musicians and participated in experimental theater events. As a visiting artist with the Missouri Arts Council in Saint Louis from 1968 to 1969, Cruz was involved with the Black Artists Group. In 1976, with his wife, Patricia, Cruz established Spectacle, Inc., a multimedia theater production company bringing together poetry, painting, movement, film, and music. From 1970 to 1983, he taught painting and drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and then returned to New York City, where he taught at various institutions.
In 1987 The Studio Museum in Harlem mounted Emilio Cruz: Spilled Nightmares, Revelations, and Reflections, a solo exhibition that included Thanksgiving and Other Holidays (1986). Since the 1980s the Museum has featured Cruz’s work in a number of group exhibitions.