Ricardo Valverde's 'Solo Landing'
By Armando Durón Boulevard Night , 1970, Gelatin silver print with hand-applied pigment I might as well begin with a full disclaimer: I have been a fan of Ricardo Valverde since I first met him in the late 1980s. I have collected his works, and I was honored to speak at his funeral in 1998. So this missive doesn’t come from some alleged objective space where pseudo art critics roam. A retrospective of Ricardo’s work, which opened at the Vincent Price Gallery at East Los Angeles College on May 17th (and runs through July 26th), under the title Ricardo Valverde: Experimental Sights, 1971-1996 , is the first solo exhibition since 1994. But this is his first retrospective and it is well-worth seeing. Featuring a twenty-five year career, with over one hundred works, guest curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill presents an artist on a mission to distinguish himself even as he might have struggled to seem to stay within the bounds of Chicano artspeak of the times. ...
