Color Grid. Ziggurat form. Hand signed and numbered silkscreen. Tony Bechara, Artist born in Puerto Rico in 1942. Painter, printmaker. Bechara attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and the School of Jurisprudence and Diplomacy at that same university. He spent one year at the Sorbonne in Paris and, finally, entered New York University. Later, he attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Since 1977 he has taken part in numerous group and solo exhibits in Puerto Rico, the United States, Europe, and Latin America. An acrylic painter known for pointillism, meaning many vibrant, mulit-colored small dots and grids, Tony Bechara is also an appointee of Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City to the City's Latin Media and Entertainment Commission, whose purpose is to promote Latin American media culture. Bechara is also Chairman of the Board of El Museo del Barrio, New York's only Latino museum dedicated to Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American art. In 2006 he was awarded first prize by the California Museum of Latin American Art. His conceptual interest, in his own words, centers on the dynamics of color and the expressive possibilities of Pointillism and abstract geometry. His work is related to “automatic painting” and the uncontrolled gestures of Dada artists such as Hans Jean Arp and Surrealist such as Andre Masson. This also bears similarities albeit more formally geometric to mexican Modernist Pedro Friedeberg. Each painting is constructed in a predetermined number of colors, distributed systematically but applied at random as countless dots and daubs. The general pattern that results is, then, unpredictable. ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS 1980 Apollon Galerie Die Insel, Munich, Germany 1980 Cayman Gallery, New York City (Graphics) 1980 Bild & Rahmen Gallery, Munich Germany (Graphics) 1982 Gallery Yves Arman, New York City 1984 Georgetown Artists Space, Washington, D.C. 1985 Museo del Barrio, New York City 1986 Hubert Humphrey Building, Main Gallery, Department of Education, Washington, D.C. 1989 Alternative Museum, New York City 1993 Artist Space, New York City 2006 Latincollector, NYC 2006 Andre Zarre Gallery, New York City 2006 Ramis Barquet Gallery, Monterrey, Mexico SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1977 "Biennial", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City 1976 "Magnet; New York", Center for Inter-American Relations, New York City 1978 "Resurgence '78", El Barrio Museum, New York City 1978 "Bridges", Henry Street Settlement House, New York City 1979 "Five New Painters", Soho Center for Visual Arts, New York City 1979 "Criss-Cross Patterns", Fine Arts Center, Boulder Colorado 1979 "Fifteen New Talents", Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Connecticut 1979 "Latin American Painters", Queens Museum, New York City 1980 "Islamic Allusions", Alternative Museum, New York City, A.Kingsley, Curator AWARDS National Endowment for the Arts, Fellowship, 1980 MOLAA Art Prize, Museum of Latin American Art, 2006 Latinos of the Year, El Diario La Prensa, November 1, 2006 COLLECTIONS Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut Albright Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania El Barrio Museum, New York City Harlem Art Collection, New York State Office Building, New York City Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts Mobil Corporation Owens Corning Fiberglass Corporation, Toledo, Ohio Chermayeff & Geismar Associates, Inc., New York City The Brodsky Organization, NYC Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico PUBLIC COMMISSIONS Art Across the Park, Central Park, N.Y.C. Dept. of Cultural Affairs, 1982 Mural, Cooper Square Development Corporation, New York City 1988