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San Antonio Express-News
Arts
G Section
Sunday, July 2, 1995 Arts
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Contemporary Art Month

Chicano pioneer reflects on Italian sojourn

[[image - painting]] 
'Well Heeled,' an acrylic on canvas by Mel Casas, is on exhibit at the Carrington/Gallagher gallery. 

By Dan R. Goddard 
Express-News Arts Writer

Shoes have become the latest fetish for Mel Casas, one of the city's most influential artists. His one-man show, "I Am Talking to You," at Carrington/Gallagher, is filled with portraits of ladies' footwear that look as if they were painted with ice cream. 

While living in Italy, Casas became entranced by women's shoes as he watched fashionable, leggy European girls and women in their mini-skirts and high heels. Always an artist who likes to work in series, Casas has turned his macho whimsy into nearly two dozen delicate, jewellike paintings of shoes.

Rather than using a brush, he pours luscious, creamy acrylics onto his small, square canvases. The layers of rich, thick colors create a lustrous gloss in these paintings. Much like Andy Warhol's soup cans, Casas' shoes are personal icons. But rather than making a comment on mass merchandising, Casas turns the shoes into sly, psychological portraits.

"In Europe, I noticed that the women wore more high-heel shoes. They were wearing the mini-skirts with the stockings that come to mid-thigh. A pair of high heels just does amazing things to a woman's leg; it's a

See ITALIAN/4G

'I Am Talking To You' Exhibit by Mel Casas
Where: Carrington/Gallagher, 7959 Broadway, Suite 508, 826-1362
When: Through July 29

Mexican art after the muralists 

[[image - painting]] 
'The Wall' by Guillermo Meza is inlucded in "A Mexican Perspective' at the Mexican Cultural Institute.

By Dan R. Goddard 
Express-News Arts Writer

The art south of the border has gone in many different directions since "la ruptura," the generational break with Mexican mural painting in the 1960s. Sixteen of the artists representing that break compose "A Mexican Perspective" on view until Sept. 24 at the Mexican Cultural Institute in HemisFair Park.

This Contemporary Art Month exhibit is drawn from the permanent collection of the Mexican Cultural Institute in Washington. Featuring some of Mexico's leading late 20th-century artists, this is just a sampling from the collection donated to the institute by William Kimberly and his family, the former owners of the Kimberly Art Gallery.

Mural art was the dominant art form in Mexico until the '60s. During the '50s, a second generation of Mexican artists began to challenge the Big Three mural painters. Among this second generation were Francisco Toledo, Gunther Gerzso and Vincente Rojo, who are in this exhibit and who eschewed Social Realist dogma.

Neither didactic nor overtly nationalistic, their art charts the inner self in the tradition of "ensimismamiento," relying on images derived from

See 'PERSPECTIVE'/4G

'A Mexcian Perspective: 16 Contemporary Mexican Painters'
Where: Mexican Cultural Institute, HemisFair Part, 227-0123
When: Through Sept. 24