Opening Reception
Thursday, September 26th2019
6:30 PM to 10:00 PM
City Club Los Angeles
555 S. Flower Street, 51stFloor
Los Angeles, CA 90071
The exclusive City Club Los Angeles will have distinguished Contemporary Chicano Artist Roberto Gutierrez’s paintings on display as part of their venue’s Hispanic Heritage Month’s celebrations. Gutierrez will have on display 20 of his works that reflect the best of Los Angeles, which consist of paintings that are acrylic on canvas, gouache on paper, and oil pastel on rag paper.
Gutierrez is known for his works that capture the magic of urban expressionism of metropolitan landscapes and his favorite is his native Los Angeles. He has spent most of his adult life painting biographical collections of his beloved East Los Angeles, his birthplace.
At 17 years old, Gutierrez enlisted into the U.S. Marines, spent his first four years training, learning and serving without war. In 1965, he re-upped for a second term and this time, he found himself in the middle of the hellish and horrific Vietnam war, landing on the Chu Lai base in the south Vietnam coast. Miraculously he returned, a survivor of a war, Gutierrez used his G.I. Bill to attend East Los Angeles Community College, where he excelled in art classes. Art: Painting, sketching, and watercolors would in time become his passion and ultimate savior of his severe PTSD.
He grew as an artist at Self-Help Graphics, where under the guidance and inspiration of late Franciscan nun, Sister Karen Boccalero, he discovered that not only did he possess a gift for painting, but his art was also a healing balm on his PTSD and angst from his difficult childhood. He credits Sister Karen as his saving grace after his Vietnam nightmare.
Today, Gutierrez has expanded his art suites of East Los Angeles to include Alcatraz in San Francisco, Central Park/NYC, and Paris, France. He has extraordinary contemporary and abstract collections. And, then there is the angst of Trump and with his PTSD crossing paths meant Gutierrez got political. The end result is the Trump Art Suite.