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La Puerto Del Sol

Primary (New York, New York, 1909–1979)
NationalityAmerican, North America
Date1958
MediumOil on linen canvas
DimensionsFramed: 51 3/4 x 64 3/16 in. (131.4 x 163.1 cm)
Canvas: 51 1/4 x 63 3/4 in. (130.2 x 161.9 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of the Longview Foundation, Inc., G1960.10
Rights Statement
Collection AreaModern and Contemporary Art
Object numberG1960.10
On View
On view
Label Text
From 1950 until his death in 1979, Norman Lewis was a leading figure in Abstract Expressionist painting circles in New York—a relative rarity for an artist of color at the time. In his travels to Spain in the 1950s, Lewis studied the paintings at the Museo Nacional del Prado—a short walk from Puerta del Sol, one of the busiest public squares in Madrid. Lewis’s tight clusters of varying colors suggest moving masses of people. “When I was in Madrid,” Lewis recalled in an interview, “one of the things in my own self-education was the discouraging fact that painting pictures didn’t bring about any change.” In later paintings, Lewis used this compositional technique to mimic crowds of protestors during the Civil Rights Movement. Works like "La Puerto del Sol" prefigure Lewis’s paintings of the 1960s and 1970s, which strive to convey the African American struggle through abstraction.
Exhibitions
Flame
William Lewis Lester
1964
Gulf Coast
William Lewis Lester
1962
Bird at the Window
William Lewis Lester
1962
Hurricane's Path
William Lewis Lester
1958
Window
William Lewis Lester
1960
Market
William Lewis Lester
1957
Rocks and Cypress
Loren Norman Mozley
1953
Gulf Coast
William Lewis Lester
1967-1968
Broken Strata
William Lewis Lester
1971
Of the Sea
William Lewis Lester
1967-1968
Lake and Cliff
William Lewis Lester
1965
Bamboo Blind
William Lewis Lester
1970