Loved to Death – Maria Alquilar

Loved to Death
A retrospective of the work of Maria Alquilar

June 8 – July 29, 2017
Opening Reception on Thursday, June 8, 2017, from 5 to 7pm

Gallery Hours: Wednesday through Saturday, 11 to 4 and by appointment

Who was Maria Alquilar? She was Barbara Pincus from Flatbush, Brooklyn who became Barbara Taffet, a post war bride, and with her husband, Frank Taffet, was part of the East Coast migration to California, the sunny land of opportunity. She was a mother of three, social worker, school teacher, art collector, sudden widow, a prominent Sacramento gallery owner and finally, Maria Alquilar, her new invented persona, and the well regarded artist. It is her impressive body of work, left behind since her death in 2014 at age 86, which JAYJAY will feature and celebrate with this exhibit. Alquilar was a painter and ceramicist inspired by the narrative artists she admired, exhibited and collected from her own gallery, Jennifer Pauls Gallery, and other sources, such as The Candy Store and The Short Center. She became an active public artist for several cities across the country, including Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose and Denver. She was commissioned by Art in Architecture, General Services Administration to do the award winning Port of Entry piece in San Luis, AZ. Her work can be found in the collections of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.; Redding Museum, Redding, CA; University of California, Davis; McDonald’s Corporation; Chase Manhattan Bank; and the Department of the Interior Museum Collection.

Categories: 2017, Exhibitions