Carlos Villa

Carlos Villa (December 11, 1936 – March 23, 2013) was a Filipino-American visual artist, curator and faculty member in the Painting Department at the San Francisco Art Institute. His work often explored the meaning of cultural diversity and sought to expand awareness of multicultural issues in the arts.

Early life and education Carlos Villa was born on December 11, 1936, in San Francisco, California, to immigrant parents in the Tenderloin District. who taught him to study etchings by Matisse. Valledor and Villa were close friends and often referred to each other as "cousins" even though they were not related.

Villa started to display his work in 1958 and went on to receive a B.F.A. in Education in 1961 from the California School of Fine Arts (now known as San Francisco Art Institute), and a subsequent M.F.A. degree in painting in 1963 from Mills College.

Art career

In the early 1960s, Villa was associated with the Park Place Gallery Group in New York City and worked as a minimalist, focusing on textures. He moved back to San Francisco in 1969, ready to approach his work in a new manner. This exhibition was an alternative celebration of the United States Bicentennial, and focused on people of color and women. It showcased artists including Ruth Asawa, Bernice Bing, Rolando Castellón, Claude Clark, Robert Colescott, Frank Day, Rupert García, Mike Henderson, Oliver Lee Jackson, Frank LaPena, Linda Lomahaftewa, George Longfish, Ralph Maradiaga, José Montoya, Manuel Neri, Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Darryl Sapien, Raymond Saunders, James Hiroshi Suzuki, Horace Washington, Al Wong, René Yañez, Leo Valledor. The Worlds In Collision project continued in subsequent symposia, web projects and courses until 2013.

In 2010, Villa organized Rehistoricizing Abstract Expressionism in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1950s-1960s, a web project, symposium and exhibition at the Luggage Store Gallery that focused attention on contributions by women and artists of color (primarily abstract expressionist painters) that were overlooked by art history. In 2020, Villa was part of the group exhibition Prospect.5: Yesterday We Said Tomorrow at Prospect New Orleans.

He was also the subject of the book Carlos Villa and the Integrity of Spaces (Meritage Press, 2011) an anthology of essays about his work and influence edited by Theodore S. Gonzalves, featuring essays and poetry by Bill Berkson, David A.M. Goldberg, Theodore S. Gonzalves, Mark Dean Johnson, Margo Machida, and Moira Roth.

Teaching Villa was a faculty member in the Painting Department at the San Francisco Art Institute where he started teaching in 1969. Some of his former students include Paul Pfeiffer, Michael Arcega, Kehinde Wiley, and Barry McGee.

Exhibitions 1977 – Look, Touch, Rub, Pull, Smell, and Hear, included Carlos Villa, Chisato Nishioka Watanabe, Phil Weidman, , Phil Hitchcock, Jock Reynold, Laureen Landau, Sylvia Lark, William Maxwell, Bruce Guttin, Paul DeMarinis, and Jim Pomeroy, Artspace, Sacramento, California 1985 – Carlos Villa: 1961–1984, solo retrospective, C.N. Gorman Museum and at the Memorial Union Art Gallery, University of California, Davis 2022 – Carlos Villa: Roots and Reinvention (solo exhibition), San Francisco Arts Commission Main Gallery, War Memorial Veterans Building, San Francisco, California 2022 – Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision (solo exhibition), Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, California 1973 – Adaline Kent Award, San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), San Francisco, California, 1987, 2000 – Guest Artist, American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy, 1989 – Distinguished Alumni Award, San Francisco Art Institute, 1997 – Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award, 1998 – Flintridge Foundation Grant, 2000 – Pamana Award, Filipino American Art Exposition, 2012 – Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Arts, Fine Arts.