Anthony Vasquez

db 1981. Painter -

Anthony Vasquez is a Chicano-American multidisciplinary artist born 1981 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, currently based in Budapest, Hungary. He received a BA in Studio Art with an emphasis in painting and printmaking from Adams State University in Southern Colorado. Vasquez has exhibited his work throughout the US, in Colorado, Michigan, Arizona, and Massachusetts, as well as internationally in India, and most recently in Budapest, Hungary, where he is represented by Horizont Gallery. Most recently, Vasquez has shown his new body of works with his first solo show in Europe, Light Necessities in the fall of 2022 with Horizont. Sixteen of his works are in the collection of the Central Bank of Hungary, MNB. Vasquez continues to maintain his practice at Budapest Art Factory.

Within the objects I am constructing with wood and acrylic paint, there is a certain life that comes from the material itself. I am intentional in treating the natural surface of wood as it is its own skin, and integral to the visual outcome as a new contemporary object.

The 3-dimensionality of Anthony’s objects, with reflective light and color gradations harmonize with the visual elements of the natural material, and illuminate the interactive potential between the object and the viewer. Perhaps with a bit of rebellious cutting into the hierarchies of material and disciplines. Anthony is interested in the ways building with wood is viewed as craft and not fine art.

With the series titled We Share the Same Sky and New Objects Same Sky, Anthony continues to investigate the combination of his different cultural and social contexts and his family of origin were formative to his identity as an artist.

His choice of natural wood as material is influenced by a rich heritage of his father and grandfathers vocation as carpenters and his growing up in that working environment. Learning alongside them, he grew up working with power tools used in the building trade. Since 2020, Anthony has been exploring the intersection between contemporary art and wood as a material to construct new abstract objects.

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