Olga Albizu

Puerto Rican-born artist

• Born: May 31, 1924
• Birthplace: Ponce, Puerto Rico
• Died: July 30, 2005
• Place of death: New York, New York

Known for her vivid colors, Albizu was an abstract expressionist painter whose work reflects the experimentation prevalent in art during the mid-twentieth century. Her work bridged the gap between the cerebral and the commercial appearing in museums and on the cover of record albums.

Early Life

Olga Albizu Rosaly (OHL-guh ahl-BEE-sew roh-SAH-lee) was born in Ponce, the second largest city in Puerto Rico. She was the only child of Sarah Rosaly de Albizu and Luis Antonio Albizu. An uncle on her mother’s side was Pedro Juan Rosaly, a wealthy banker and former mayor of Ponce. She spent her childhood in the southern city and was reared a devout Roman Catholic, a religion that she honored throughout her life.

In 1942, Albizu began studying art and literature at the Río Piedras campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR). While at UPR, she studied painting with famed Spanish abstract expressionist Esteban Vicente. After the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), UPR welcomed exiled Spanish intellectuals and artists. Their presence, the growing anticolonialist fervor, and the rising social unrest on the island created a stimulating and diverse artistic atmosphere.

A faction of Albizu’s generation of Puerto Rican artists embraced a populist agenda influenced by the Mexican muralist movement while another faction opted for the “universalism” of abstract art and its rejection of the representational, a movement prevalent in early-twentieth-century Europe. Albizu’s art reflects the latter style. However, her angular boxes of vivid color pressed and splashed together resemble La Perla, the colorful slums of San Juan, from a distance.

After earning an Art Students’ League fellowship for postgraduate work in 1948, Albizu moved to New York. There she studied with Czech modernist Vaclav Vytlacil and German abstract painter Hans Hoffman. To support herself during her early years in New York, Albizu took various jobs. Working and taking classes severely limited the time she had to paint. Nevertheless, Albizu rented space in a garage, where she spent every free moment listening to classical music as she painted.

In 1951, Albizu traveled to Europe to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. The following year, she attended the Academia de Bellas Artes in Florence, Italy after which she spent a year painting in Provence, France. Albizu returned to New York in 1953. In December of 1956, a New York Times review of her first solo exhibit at the Panoras Gallery praised the young painter’s “singing colors” and “sure strokes.”

During the late 1950’s and into the early 1960’s, Albizu’s paintings were used as the primary artwork for several album covers. The first and best known are those created for saxophonist Stan Getz, whose jazz compositions increased the popularity of bossa nova in the United States. Each of the paintings features compressed geometric shapes of a single color—cool blues, hot reds and muted yellows that reflect the mood and flow of the music.

Life’s Work

Albizu was one of twenty-five artists whose work was exhibited at the Puerto Rican art exhibit of 1957, which was held at the Riverside Museum in New York. One reviewer of the somewhat infamous exhibit—which some academics say received scornful reviews because of its radical representations of class—suggested that poverty prevented many of the artists from achieving professional standards. However, he proclaimed Albizu “notable.”

Later that year and again in 1958, the Ateneo Puertorriqueño (Puerto Rican Athenaeum) held solo exhibits of Albizu’s work. Subsequent solo shows that featured her vibrant oils were held at galleries in New York, Washington, D.C, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Germany, and Mexico throughout the 1960’s. In the late 1990’s, she experienced a resurgence of solo gallery exhibits in Puerto Rico. Albizu’s canvases also were included in many group shows throughout the late twentieth century. Her paintings have appeared in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Interamerican Biennial in Mexico, and are in the permanent collection of the Museo Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. Albizu lived in New York until her death in 2005.

Significance

Albizu is considered a pioneer of abstract art in Puerto Rico. Her work hangs in galleries and private collections around the world. Several pieces have been auctioned by Sotheby’s of New York. Further, her paintings have been reproduced on the covers of musical recordings; among those are album covers for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony, and the Bill Evans Trio, and Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s Jazz Samba (1962). Several of the original covers are collectors’ items.

Bibliography

Ashton, Dore. “Art: By Puerto Ricans.” The New York Times, January 10, 1957, p. 45. A review of the infamous exhibit at the Riverside Museum in New York.

Báez, Myrna, and José A. Torres Martinó, eds. Puerto Rico Art & Identity. San Juan, P.R.: University of Puerto Rico Press, 2004. Bilingual reference on Puerto Rican art from the late 1800’s to the present.

Cockcroft, Eva Sperling. “From Barrio to Mainstream: The Panorama of Latino Art.” In Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Literature and Art, edited by Thomas Weaver and Claudio Esteva-Fabregat. Houston, Tex.: Arte Público Press, 1994. A historical overview of Latino art and artists from a sociopolitical perspective.

Samoza, Mary E. “Visual Language and the Puerto Rican Woman Artist.” Callaloo 17, no. 3 (Summer, 1994): 905. Cursory discussion of Puerto Rican women artists with a nod toward linking them to more well-known female artists.