Guillermo Kuitca (b. 1961)

Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Latin American Art, November 23, 1998, lot 55, illustrated in color

Caracas, Museo Alejandro Otero, Guillermo Kuitca en Caracas, November 16, 1997-March 15, 1998, p. 32, no. 13, illustrated in color

The canvas is unlined and well stretched. There is significant craquelure throughout. The surface is heavily varnished and there are areas of slight yellowing scattered throughout. There is a 1/8 in. hole along the left edge 8 in. from the bottom. Overall in good condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Guillermo's Kuitca's prolific production encompasses a varied, yet highly cohesive body of work that focuses on the intersection between the spatial and the corporeal through a repertoire of visual references to apartment floor plans, maps, city grids, and diagrammatic renderings of stadiums and theatres that function as poetic ruminations on the pathos of modern life. The series of paintings titled Naked Tango (After Warhol), echo these ideas while summoning such varied sources as the work of pop art icon Andy Warhol, the gestural abstractions of Jackson Pollock, aspects of post 1960s conceptual and performance based art, and the contributions of the German avant-garde choreographer Pina Bausch whom Kuitca met and worked with in the early 1980s.

 

Inspired by Warhol's 1960s Dance Diagram paintings which consisted of neatly drawn footprints based on diagrams appropriated from instruction manuals used for teaching popular dance forms in mid-century America, Kuitca's Tango series, unlike Warhol's paintings, break with the methodical aspects of these static diagrams and offer up instead a highly expressionistic rendering that literally embodies the seductive and dynamic qualities of Argentina's national dance form. Here, Kuitca invoking the physicality of Pollock's famous "drip" paintings, literally removes his shoes, dips his feet in paint and smears it across the pictorial surface creating a work at once inscribed with emotion, corporeal movement, the spirit of Argentine popular culture and the lingering effects of postwar American painting.