Eduardo Vilaro looks at bodies all the time. He has to. As artistic director and CEO of Ballet Hispánico, Vilaro watches the company’s dancers at work, how they occupy a space, and how the actual lines of their bodies appear in that space and, thus, animate it. “I’m not a painter, though I love art, but I can say that I always paint spaces,” Vilaro notes, referencing the works he choreographs. “I paint with bodies.”

Among his favorite bodies is one depicted by Caravaggio, “Boy with a Basket of Fruit,” that is in the permanent collection of the Borghese Gallery in Rome. It was years ago, when New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted a Caravaggio exhibition, that Vilaro first saw this painting; that was also the first time he’d seen any work by Caravaggio. “To be honest, I was not familiar with Caravaggio before that, even in my fine arts classes in a school run by Jesuits, who really do provide the best full education. But since the moment I saw this work, I’ve not forgotten it.”

A former dancer himself, the Cuban-born Vilaro (who came to America as a boy in 1969) continues to marvel at the sheer physicality and musculature of Caravaggio’s model. “I always notice the particulars of a gaze, whether it’s a dancer who looks up while on stage or a figure on canvas. This one is inviting a gaze from the viewer.”

Vilaro cites the sheer sensuality of this model, who scholars agree was a 16-year-old friend of Caravaggio’s and fellow painter. “He has his white shirt lowered from the shoulder, which gives a homoerotic feel to it. His neck is thick, but as you follow the lines, it thins and makes for a prominent jawline. His shoulder is muscular and mas-culine, but has a feminine bend to it. The model invites you to look at his whole body. I look at this and ask, ‘What is going on in this young man’s mind?’”

Vilaro is also attracted to the way Caravaggio found his models, using “ordinary” citizens to assume regal poses; some were peasants or, in some cases, prostitutes. “As a man of color, I am fascinated by how Caravaggio utilized people who weren’t considered noble, people who were maybe marginalized. For me, the subject here is experiencing some kind of suffering simply through who he is in life.”

The year 2024 marked Vilaro’s 15th season as Ballet Hispánico’s artistic director, and while he has long remained among the dance world’s most creative forces, he has pushed himself further by choreographing pieces based on artworks, particularly those by Juan de Pareja (1606–1670), the Afro-Hispanic painter who worked closely with Diego Velázquez. Last July, the Met presented several performances of a work it had commissioned from Vilaro; “Buscando a Juan (Seeking Out Juan)” accompanied the museum’s exhibition of Pareja’s art and was created specifically to be presented on its historic patio relocated from the castle of Vélez Blanco.

“The moment I got the commission, I delved into it,” Vilaro recalls. “It was a powerful moment and experience for me, and the chance to work closely with curators. I was able to dive deeply into this man’s life. There were so many connections to my own life, as someone of mixed race. I was able to utilize art as a jumping-off point, a catalyst for something new.”

During a recent teaching term in Venice, Vilaro became entranced with the works of Tintoretto. “This summer, though, I’m going to Rome, where one of my visits will be to see the boy with the fruit again.”

The above article was written by David Masello for Fine Art Connoisseur

View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.

ABN: Introduce yourself — who you are and what your vision as an artist is?

Sveta Esser: I was born in Ukraine in 1975 and studied art at the Yekaterinburg College of Art, located in a picturesque mountain region known for its natural beauty. After my initial degree in Russia, I did a student exchange program in Europe, where I pursued my second art degree.
In 1996, at the age of 20, I moved to Israel with my husband, Alex Pauker, who is also an artist.
Alongside my formal training, I gained professional experience working as an illustrator and as a creative consultant for a publishing house in an artists’ village near Haifa. During this time, I explored a variety of painting techniques and quickly discovered a passion for the rich, textural quality of palette knife painting. I drew inspiration from the stunning landscapes and rural scenes of Israel and Tuscany, which continue to influence my work today.

ABN: What is your background?

SE: As an artist in today’s world, I work in a unique technique that I call Pixelism. My artwork immediately captivates the viewer with vibrant colors and a truly original approach to composition. The core of my method is that each painting consists of numerous squares and pixels, and each one of them possesses its own unique shade, collectively creating a stunning visual effect.
My technique is not just a style. For me, Pixelism is a metaphor for life and integration: every single pixel is important and unique, but only together do they form a complete, harmonious picture. This is a principle I carry over into my social work as well.

I believe my creations exemplify innovative thinking that is highly relevant in the modern artistic context. For me, art is not an escape from reality, but a way to transform it. I use my brush and palette knife to build bridges—between cultures, between ideas, and between people. This commitment allows me to be one of the prominent figures in today’s art world.

ABN: What is your work philosophy and how does that impact your work?

SE: My goal is not simply to create a beautiful object, but to provoke a dialogue. I want my work to generate an emotional resonance and make the viewer reflect on how we perceive the world—both from a distance and up close.

Upon closer inspection, viewers can uncover hidden details that only become fully visible from a certain distance away from the canvas. This interactive approach to art fosters a unique connection between the viewer and the artwork.

Ever wanted to touch the artwork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art? You’re in luck. Today, November 10, the museum launched two digital exhibitions that allow visitors to walk through its galleries using a virtual reality headset or a standard computer via a link on the institution’s website.

The Met selected one of its most iconic exhibits, the 1st-century BCE Egyptian Temple of Dendur, and a selection of Oceanic artworks displayed in its newly renovated Michael C. Rockefeller Wing for the institution’s first forays into virtual reality. Based on three-dimensional scans conducted within the museum, Dendur Decoded and Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time include realistic, if embellished, renderings and video-game-style missions. Both programs were designed by Met staff and Atopia, a culture-focused virtual reality platform.

In the Temple of Dendur virtual reality tour, created in consultation with The Met’s Curator of Egyptian Art Isabel Stünkel, users are led through a series of modules recounting the history of the Nubian structure, which was gifted to the museum in 1967. One Minecraft-esque activity simulates the institution’s conservation work in the ’70s that involved reconstructing the site brick by brick. Visitors of the digital temple are prompted to leave a voice note with reflections when they complete the virtual tour. In today’s press release, The Met said that the virtual walkthrough presents more than 150 new images and videos culled from UNESCO and the museum archives.

Meanwhile, in the simulation of the Oceanic art galleries, developed in collaboration with The Met’s Curator for Arts of Oceania Maia Nuku, virtual visitors are greeted by a floating rendering of “Female Ancestor Figure,” dated to the 16th to the 19th century by an unrecorded Inyai-Ewa artist.

Above the artifact hangs the “Ceremonial House Ceiling” (1970–73), launching a slideshow of images and a narration describing the more than 270 painted bark panels comprising the work. Users are tasked to roam the galleries and successfully “discover” 16 artworks, a badge earned by clicking on each object, sometimes concealed by thick vegetation.

According to the press release, The Met’s Emerging Technology and Digital department created a platform with Atopia, intended to allow other cultural institutions to design similar virtual programs in-house and without using code.

The Met’s Director and CEO Max Hollein said in a press statement that virtual programs provide “unparalleled cultural experiences to audiences no matter where they are located.”

The National Sporting Library & Museum (NSLM) is hosting “A Vision of Nature,” an exhibition of 55 paintings, sculptures, and mixed-media installations selected from 531 entries submitted by members of the non-profit organization American Women Artists. The jurors were Shannon Fitzgerald (Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando), Claudia Pfeiffer (National Sporting Library & Museum), and Robin Knowlton (former AWA executive director).

On view are works that address four themes: love of the land, sporting, animals and wildlife, and country pursuits. These make sense at NSLM, which was founded in 1954 in the heart of Virginia’s horse and hunt country. From its scenic six-acre campus, the museum advocates for conservation of open spaces and waterways.

This is the ninth exhibition AWA has co-organized through its initiative to have 25 museum shows for members over 25 years. The exhibitors will be eligible for more than $30,000 in awards, including a $10,000 Grand Prize sponsored by the Janet & Robert Lee Family Fund.

Info At a Glance:
“A Vision of Nature” – American Women Artists
National Sporting Library & Museum
Middleburg, Virginia
nationalsporting.org
Through March 22, 2026

Visit AWA’s website for the accompanying catalogue and digital version of the exhibition.

View fine art auctions, exhibitions, and more events by the month on our calendar page at FineArtConnoisseur.com – updated daily!

Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present May the Ground Seethe, a solo exhibition of painting and sculpture by Los Angeles artist Shizu Saldamando. Saldamando’s intimate portraits distill figures from context, focusing on the body as the site of political struggle and communal joy. The title of the exhibition borrows a lyric from the song “MML” by Dorian Wood, whose portrait is a centerpiece of the show. Wood’s lyrics describe a collective movement built on love and rage, one that Saldamando takes up in this body of work. By spotlighting figures within her community who embody resistance to the prevailing currents of division and hate, Saldamando offers an alternative path of joyful, beautiful revolution. 

Saldamando works on raw wood panel and incorporates mixed media collage into her paintings. The compositions often take into account the natural grain of the wood supports, most dramatically here in the portrait of Narsiso Martinez, where shades of green paint delicately follow the woodgrain, evoking a rolling landscape. Martinez is framed by gnarled fruiting tees executed in paint and enhanced with washi paper collage, nodding to both the artist’s Japanese heritage and the subject’s history in farm labor and his artistic focus on the dignity and rights of the often undocumented people who make up the agricultural labor force. The composition is framed at the corners in delicate gold leaf, lending the picture an almost baroque sensibility.

For Saldamando, materials are extremely important as signifiers of history and carriers of memory. Her wood panels nod to the beautifully crafted woods of Japanese design, but also to the small wooden sculptures made by the artist’s grandfather while he was interned with other Japanese-Americans during the second World War. The panel rejects the often heroically masculine twentieth century art history of painting on canvas. Instead of beginning with a blank canvas, Saldamando works with wood as a readymade, inviting its natural individuality into the work. Pigment fuses with support to create soft, nuanced surfaces that lend themselves to the delicacies of skin. Saldamando also often works with washi paper, collaging it into painted compositions or building delicate sculptural elements from patterned paper – as with several small paper flower sculptures in the exhibition – incorporating a rich history of craft production into the work.

Each painting pays homage to its subject, honoring their artistic spirit through detail and embellishment. Dorian Wood shines in a hot pink dress over intricate black lace, their defiant energy feathering around their body in ethereal bits of collaged silver and pink. Kindred spirit and fellow fine and tattoo artist Tamara Santibañez confidently wears a brick wall on her sweatshirt, a nod to her deeply-researched work on the brick as a symbol of resistance and power. The punk rocker and community organizer Marin is captured at local festival, Dyke Day LA – relaxed, joyful, present. The largest work in the exhibition finds counterculture photographer Louis Jacinto and his partner Kene Rosa in their living room, surrounded by Louis’ artwork and cushioned in striking patterns, a nod to Kene’s history in the fashion industry.

Each portrait, at its most basic level, counteracts the erasure of marginalized people by simply asserting their existence. But more importantly, Saldamando captures the spirit of resilience and confidence that true resistance requires. Her cast of characters together provide a portrait of the artist’s community. Each portrait captures and celebrates the specific details that people use to construct their personhood. The portraits also serve as memorials, uplifting and honoring the work of creating a joyful and revolutionary existence amid interlocking systemic oppressions. Each work keenly sees its subject and celebrates their contributions to the community, a vital project in this moment of widespread erasure and uncertainty. Just as Wood sings in “MML,” this body of work seeks to be “a mouthpiece of love, rising rising rising” in collective power and rage. These seeds have the power to rise from the ground and grow into a movement of community and care that builds upon foundations laid by histories of queer resistance, labor organizing, and environmental justice. Saldamando transforms legacies of prejudice and exclusion into odes to resilience and flourishing.

A new permanent public artwork by artist and community organizer Shellyne Rodriguez, unveiled last Saturday, November 8, pays tribute to the Bronx’s residents in sculptural form.

Rodriguez’s terracotta, brick, and steel “Phoenix Ladder: Monument to the People of the Bronx” portrays an ascending ladder with no end, in an artistic testament to the resilience of the borough in the face of adversity.

The monument evokes the rebuilding of the borough after the 1970s fires, according to a press release. During that decade, fires, sometimes initiated by landlords seeking insurance payouts, razed 80% of the South Bronx’s housing stock. The permanent work, commissioned by the city through the Percent for Art program, stands between Grand Concourse and Morris Avenue.

The Bronx-based artist conceived the monument seven years ago. Reached by email, Rodriguez said the conception of the monument came during a time, “when the memorialization of the violent foundations of the United States was collectively being called into question.”

Rodriguez has long revered the Bronx in her artworks, including in a series of portraits documenting fellow political organizers and essential workers during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

During the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, activists toppled Confederate monuments across the country, and in New York City, calls by the group Decolonize This Place to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue in front of the American Museum of Natural History gained momentum. (The equaestrian statue was finally removed in 2022)

In her email to Hyperallergic, Rodriguez posed the question: “If abolition is not solely about what we dismantle, but also about what we build in its stead, then what monuments or points of gathering will we, the collective body of the dispossessed who make life on the periphery of empire, make for ourselves as stewards of our own histories and futures which reflect our struggles and our triumphs as a people?”

Please help us congratulate Barbara Ortiz for winning Overall First Place in the September 2025 PleinAir Salon, judged by Abigail McBride, Director of McBride Gallery.

“This piece gave me an immediate and visceral sense of place,” Abigail said. “It pulled me to specific memories of being on a beach with cold water swirling around my ankles, looking out at the view. It has a beautiful outdoor light effect. But what sealed it for me is how the composition leads you back to the distance in an entertaining ride of swirls until you reach the ladder of lines: wave and land. Then a little red rocket of a light house launches you up into the sky and drops you right back down on the shore.”

About the Artist:

Capturing a moment of joyful observation and sharing that moment on canvas through the use of light and shadow, textures and edges in her representational oil paintings and pastel paintings is the reason Barbara Ortiz paints.

She enjoys the challenge of working in plein air. Due to the ever-changing light, holding onto that original visual image and incorporating a sense of weather and time of day takes immense focus. Barbara says “This is my happy place.”

Barbara took life drawing classes in the North Jersey Art Center while in high school. She studied fine art at Monmouth College and Fairleigh Dickenson University.

In 1984, Barbara moved to Cancun, Mexico where she resided until 1994. During that time, she owned and operated an interior decorating business. Upon returning to the United States, Barbara, along with her husband and two children, settled in Florida.

Barbara resumed studying oil painting and pastel. She began painting plein air in 2011. Plein air painting beautifully joined her love of painting with her love of the outdoors.

Barbara has participated in a number of invitational shows and paint outs. She has been recognized with awards for her work in both pastel and oil.

About the PleinAir Salon:

In the spirit of the French Salon created by the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, this annual online art competition, with 11 monthly cycles, leading to the annual Salon Grand Prize winners, is designed to stimulate artistic growth through competition. The PleinAir® Salon rewards artists with $50,000 in cash prizes and exposure of their work, with the winning painting featured on the cover of PleinAir® Magazine.

Winners in each monthly competition may receive recognition and exposure through PleinAir Magazine’s print magazine, e-newsletters, websites, and social media. Winners of each competition will also be entered into the annual competition. The Annual Awards will be presented live at the next Plein Air Convention & Expo.

The next round of the PleinAir Salon has begun so hurry, as this competition ends on the last day of the month. Enter your best art in the PleinAir Salon here.

View more artist and collector profiles here at FineArtConnoisseur.com.