ORIGIN

Eduardo Alvarez is a Chilean/American artist born in 1958 in Chillán, Chile. Since the beginning of his career in the late 70s, he has pioneered in the use of matter painting and mixed media as a figurative visual art form. As a member of the generation of artists living under an oppressive military regime in Chile, he transitioned in the early 80s into creative direction and photography in the advertising industry while still exploring his personal art practice in a more toned-down capacity.

In early 2001 he moved to Utah, USA with his family, where he has regained his matter painting and mixed media approach with a more abstract tilt. His mixed-media pieces are executed in a variety of mediums and often include oil, acrylic, digital images, matter painting mediums, collage, and found objects.

EDUCATION

Eduardo studied Fine Arts under pupils of Josef Albers at Universidad Católica de Chile during the late 70s. While in school, he focused on painting and drawing but through the years his creative path has expanded to include new mediums and techniques. His work has been exhibited in art galleries and public centers in Santiago, Chile and is also featured in several Chilean private collections. 

STYLE & INFLUENCES

Eduardo’s style is constantly evolving as he experiments with new mediums, delves into his own psyche, and draws inspiration from current events as well personal life experiences.

He attributes much of his influences to growing up living abroad in different countries due to his father’s work at the UN. Against the backdrop of social change brought about by an authoritarian military regime in Chile during his youth, his art becomes gradually and intentionally more poignant and unsettling. Eduardo aims to bring into question the nature of truth and its perception. There is so much about our world that remains relative and undetermined, even surreal, yet accepted as absolute reality.

A strong personal belief in Christian values and lifestyle guide his artistic journey through this ever-changing reality. Through his art, he aims to communicate daily life experiences, dreams, and introspection more powerfully than with words, allowing the spectator to relish moments large and small, recognize the surrounding beauty, and ultimately treasure being alive.

MEDIUM & TECHNIQUE

His work mainly takes form from the complexity of matter. From the tension and balance between shape, texture, and color. By actively engaging and working with matter, the resulting textures, cracks, tears, colors, and mixtures react with one another and become a new, refined form of expression. He often starts from the recovery of objects and components made from recycled and partly modified elements and transforms them into the protagonists of a new reality presented in the form of combines (assemblages). 

Through this technique, he can broaden his continual search for correspondence between painting and corporeal structures, where matter, content, and light integrate and give new meaning to daily struggle, while freely expressing the dynamic tension between content, its underlying meaning, and reality.