Hugo Bastidas

Hugo Bastidas (born August 18, 1955) is an American painter known for black and white paintings that imitate the effect of grisaille and often resemble black and white photographs. Bastidas’ paintings frequently reference architecture, water, vegetation and art history, and reflect his concern about the human condition, globalization, and their effect on the Earth's well-being.

Bastidas has exhibited throughout the U.S., Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Asia. By making thousands of marks with a size No. 1 hog's bristle brush on linen primed with rabbit-skin glue, Bastidas achieved a high level of image definition. He also works in digital photography, which informs his subject matter without rendering a photo-realistic effect.

In “Autobiography as Critique,” sculptor and educator Howard McCalebb wrote:

Recurrent subjects in Bastidas' paintings include architecture, water, vegetation, and references to art history.

In 1990–1991, Bastidas worked in Ecuador on a Fulbright Fellowship. In 2002, art critic Dominique Nahas wrote that Bastidas’ paintings “put forth a plea for cultural integrity”:

In 2004 and 2006, paintings by Bastidas appeared in Architectural Digest magazine articles that featured homes of noted interior designers.

In his 2011 review of Bastidas’ one-person show titled “Fin de Siècle,” art critic Rafael Diaz Casas commented on the artist's “re-appropriation of works by…master artists in the history of art":

Teaching

Bastidas devoted his Fulbright Fellowship (1990–91) to painting and sculpture in Ecuador (teaching and curation). His first teaching assignment was for at La Universidad Central, in advance sculpture. He was later awarded honorary full professor of art by the dean of arts and the art faculty. Since 1998, Bastidas has been a professor of art at New Jersey City University, and since 1999, he has taught and lectured at the Art Students League of New York. He has also taught at Bennington College and the National Academy Museum and School, New York City. In 2000, he was elected as a member of the Century Association in New York, NY.

From 2017 to 2019, Bastidas has collaborated with CITYarts, Inc., a non-profit organization in NYC, as the lead artist of their Following in the Footsteps of Alexander Hamilton program , a 3-piece mural (each spanning 80ft H X 25ft W) currently in progress at the Alexander Hamilton Playground in West Harlem.

Personal Bastidas is married to sculptor and interdisciplinary artist Elizabeth Demaray.