Virginia Jaramillo (artist)

Virginia Jaramillo was born on March 21, 1939,{{sfnp|Dziedzic|2023|loc="Chronology", p. 165|ps=none}} in El Paso, Texas.{{cite news |last1=Loos |first1=Ted |title=A Painter Who Puts It All on the Line |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/arts/design/virginia-jaramillo-menil-houston.html |url-access=limited |access-date=11 February 2025 |work=The New York Times |date=25 September 2020 |oclc=1645522}} Her family moved to California when she was 2 years old, settling on East Washington Boulevard in East Los Angeles.{{sfnp|Dziedzic|2023|loc="Chronology", p. 165|ps=none}} Jaramillo spent her childhood in Los Angeles and often traveled during the summers to her grandparents' turkey ranch in California's Imperial Valley.{{sfnp|Calderón|2023|p=15|ps=none}}

Jaramillo's interest in art was supported by her family and she enrolled at the public Manual Arts High School in 1954 at their encouragement; Manual Arts was well-known in the city for its association with artists like Philip Guston, Jackson Pollock, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.{{sfnp|Calderón|2023|p=15|ps=none}} While in high school, she met and eventually began dating fellow art student Daniel LaRue Johnson. When she was 18, Jaramillo gave herself the goal of exhibiting her work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

In 1958,{{sfnp|Dziedzic|2023|loc="Chronology", p. 165|ps=none}} Jaramillo enrolled in the Otis Art Institute, along with Johnson. Many of the artworks she produced during this time were painted on student-grade canvases stretched over wood that her father had procured, a result of there being no art stores in her neighborhood to purchase higher quality materials.{{cite news |last=Recinos |first=Eva |title=Virginia Jaramillo's sprawling career takes her 'East of the Sun': 'No one expected me to survive as an artist' |url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-05-17/virginia-jaramillo-paintings-career-east-of-the-sun-west-of-the-moon |work=Los Angeles Times |date=17 May 2023 |url-access=limited |access-date=11 February 2025 |oclc=3638237 }} In 1959, her painting Satire, which she had completed in her childhood bedroom, was included in LACMA's annual exhibition of contemporary art. She signed the painting with the gender neutral name "V. Jaramillo" to avoid having her work prejudged or dismissed because she was a woman.{{sfnp|Calderón|2023|p=16|ps=none}} Jaramillo and Johnson married in 1960.

In 1965, Jaramillo moved with her family to Paris after Johnson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study sculpture in France.{{cite news |last1=Hanson |first1=Sarah P. |last2=Pobric |first2=Pac |title=Pioneering American artist Daniel LaRue Johnson dies |url=https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2017/07/13/pioneering-american-artist-daniel-larue-johnson-dies |url-access=limited |access-date=10 January 2025 |work=The Art Newspaper |date=13 July 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221024143051/https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2017/07/13/pioneering-american-artist-daniel-larue-johnson-dies |archive-date=24 October 2022 |url-status=live |oclc=23658809}} They left Los Angeles amidst the Watts riots and related unrest in the city.{{sfnp|Calderón|2023|p=16|ps=none}} The move to Paris was Jaramillo's first experience leaving the country.{{sfnp|Dziedzic|2023|loc="Paris to Paper", p. 27|ps=none}} Although Jaramillo and Johnson only lived in Paris for a year, her time in the city had a significant impact on her: "It changed the way I looked at things and it kind of zipped open my brain."{{harvp|Jaramillo|2020}}, quoted in {{harvp|Dziedzic|2023|loc="Paris to Paper", p. 27}} After returning from Paris in 1966, Jaramillo and Johnson retrieved their belongings from California and moved to New York.{{sfnp|Dziedzic|2023|loc="Paris to Paper", p. 28|ps=none}}

Jaramillo's art has been primarily concerned with materials, and she states that "partly fuelled by her Mexican-American heritage," her "personal and artistic life has been a political statement."{{cite web|last1=Schofield|first1=Daisy|title=Interview with Virginia Jaramillo|url=http://schonmagazine.com/virginia-jaramillo/|website=Schön! Magazine|accessdate=5 March 2018|date=28 March 2017}} Her experiences led to her involvement in various feminist projects, such as the Third World Women issue of Heresies journal, and working on the board of the Feminist Art Institute.

Jaramillo was selected for participation in The De Luxe Show (1971) in Houston, Texas curated by Peter Bradley. The De Luxe Show was one of the first racially integrated exhibitions in the United States"{{cite web|last1=Curlee|first1=Kendall|title=DE LUXE SHOW|url=https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kld03|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|accessdate=5 March 2018}} and included artists such as Sam Gilliam, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski.{{cite web |title=Virginia Jaramillo {{!}} Now Dig This! digital archive |url=https://hammer.ucla.edu/now-dig-this/artists/virginia-jaramillo/ |accessdate=4 March 2018 |publisher=Hammer Museum |language=en}} During the 1970s she continued to exhibit. Group shows included participation in the Whitney Annual at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1972.{{cite web|title=Full text of "1972 Annual exhibition contemporary American painting"|url=https://archive.org/stream/1972annualwhit/1972annualwhit_djvu.txt|website=Archive.org}} Solo exhibitions were held at the Douglas Drake Gallery in Kansas City, and the Soho Center for Visual Artists in 1976.

In 2011, Jaramillo's work was included in Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum{{cite web|title=Now Dig This! An Introduction |url=https://hammer.ucla.edu/fileadmin/media/Mellon_projects/Now_Dig_This_/Essays/Jones_Now_Dig_This.pdf|website=Hammer Museum|publisher=The Regents of the University of California|accessdate=5 March 2018}} in Los Angeles. In 2017 she was included in We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and in the Tate Modern's Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power.

The Brooklyn Museum purchased Jaramillo's 1971 painting Untitled in 2017 through the Frieze Brooklyn Museum Fund. Initially produced for The De Luxe Show, at the time of auction this painting - along with three others by Jaramillo - had not been seen in 40 years.{{cite news |date=11 May 2017 |last=Shaw |first=Anny |title=Frieze New York fund helps Brooklyn Museum acquire work by Virginia Jaramillo |url=https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/frieze-new-york-fund-helps-brooklyn-museum-acquire-work-by-virginia-jaramillo |access-date=11 February 2025 |work=The Art Newspaper |oclc=23658809 }}

In 2020, Jaramillo staged her first-ever solo museum exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston. The show featured a variety of her Curvilinear Paintings from 1969 to 1974, many on display together for the first time.{{cite web| last=Ford |first=Lauren Moya |title=Meet Virginia Jaramillo, a Pioneering Minimalist Who Fuses Cosmology and Science Fiction |date=7 December 2020 |url=https://hyperallergic.com/605484/virginia-jaramillo-menil-collection/ |website=Hyperallergic |access-date=11 February 2025 |oclc=881810209}}

Jaramillo's work was included in the 2021 exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Centre Pompidou.{{cite book |title=Women in abstraction |date=2021 |publisher=Thames & Hudson Ltd. ; Thames & Hudson Inc |location=London : New York, New York |isbn=978-0500094372 |pages=170}}

In 2023, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Missouri, staged Jaramillo's first full-career museum retrospective, Principle of Equivalence.

• 1971 The DeLuxe Show, The Deluxe Theater, Houston{{Cite web |last=Greenberger |first=Alex |date=2021-08-11 |title=How a ‘Revolutionary’ Racially Integrated Art Exhibition in Texas Changed the Game |url=https://www.artnews.com/feature/the-deluxe-show-peter-bradley-menil-1234601096/ |access-date=2023-05-18 |website=ARTnews.com |language=en-US}}
• 1972 Whitney Annual, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York{{Cite web |last=Ratcliff |first=Carter |title=The Whitney Annual, Part I |url=https://www.artforum.com/print/197204/the-whitney-annual-part-i-36220 |access-date=2023-05-18 |website=artforum.com |language=en-US}}
• 1975 Douglas Drake Gallery, Kansas City (solo show){{Cite web |title=Virginia Jaramillo {{!}} Hammer Museum |url=https://hammer.ucla.edu/now-dig-this/artists/virginia-jaramillo |access-date=2023-05-18 |website=hammer.ucla.edu |language=en}}
• 1976 Soho Center for Visual Arts, New York (solo show)
• 2023 Principle of Equivalence, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (solo show){{Cite web |title=Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence |url=https://www.kemperart.org/exhibition/virginia-jaramillo-principle-of-equivalence |access-date=2024-01-19 |website=Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art |language=en-US}}

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• {{cite book |chapter=Freedom to Interrogate Earth |last=Calderón |first=Barbara |pages=15–21 |editor-last=Dziedzic |editor-first=Erin |title=Virginia Jaramillo: Principles of Equivalence |location=Kansas City, Missouri / New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art / Yale University Press |date=2023 |isbn=9780300270303 |oclc=1374570856 }}
• {{cite book |editor-last=Dziedzic |editor-first=Erin |title=Virginia Jaramillo: Principles of Equivalence |location=Kansas City, Missouri / New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art / Yale University Press |date=2023 |isbn=9780300270303 |oclc=1374570856 }}
• {{cite podcast |last=Jaramillo |first=Virginia |interviewer-last=Green |interviewer-first=Tyler |interviewer-link=Tyler Green (journalist) |date=1 October 2020 |title=No. 465: Virginia Jaramillo |work=The Modern Art Notes Podcast |type=Interview |url=https://manpodcast.com/portfolio/no-465-virginia-jaramillo/ |access-date=11 February 2025 }}

• {{cite book |last=Abrams |first=Matthew Jeffrey |chapter=VJ, Angel Queen |pages=121–127 |editor-last=Dziedzic |editor-first=Erin |title=Virginia Jaramillo: Principles of Equivalence |location=Kansas City, Missouri / New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art / Yale University Press |date=2023 |isbn=9780300270303 |oclc=1374570856 }}
• {{cite book |last=Colburn |first=Iris |pages=145–153 |chapter=Painting Onto the Edge of Midnight |editor-last=Dziedzic |editor-first=Erin |title=Virginia Jaramillo: Principles of Equivalence |location=Kansas City, Missouri / New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art / Yale University Press |date=2023 |isbn=9780300270303 |oclc=1374570856 }}
• {{cite magazine |last=Durón |first=Maximilíano |magazine=ARTnews |title=Pace Gallery Takes on Virginia Jaramillo, Abstract Painter Whose Work Has Recently Seen a Resurgence |date=25 July 2022 |url=https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/virginia-jaramillo-pace-gallery-representation-1234635047/ |oclc=2392716 |access-date=11 February 2025 }}
• {{cite magazine |last=Durón |first=Maximilíano |magazine=ARTnews |title=Virginia Jaramillo Draws a Line |url=https://www.artnews.com/art-news/artists/virginia-jaramillo-artist-studio-visit-1234583813/ |date=February–March 2021 |access-date=11 February 2025 |oclc=2392716 |volume=120 |number=1 |pages=14–16 }}
• {{cite book |last=Kirsch |first=Elisabeth |chapter=Handmade Papers, 1980–2005 |pages=77–83 |editor-last=Dziedzic |editor-first=Erin |title=Virginia Jaramillo: Principles of Equivalence |location=Kansas City, Missouri / New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art / Yale University Press |date=2023 |isbn=9780300270303 |oclc=1374570856 }}
• {{cite news |last=Smith |first=Roberta |author-link=Roberta Smith |work=The New York Times |title=A Gallery Resurgence in Chelsea |date=8 October 2020 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/arts/design/chelsea-art-shows-to-see-now.html |url-access=limited |access-date=11 February 2025 |oclc=1645522 }}

• {{cite interview |last=Jaramillo |first=Virginia |interviewer-last=Dziedzic |interviewer-first=Erin |title=Virginia Jaramillo with Erin Dziedzic |work=The Brooklyn Rail |oclc=64199099 |date=July–August 2023 |access-date=11 February 2025 |url=https://brooklynrail.org/2023/07/art/Virginia-Jaramillo-with-Erin-Dziedzic/ }}

• [https://menillibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/VJaramillo_GalleryGuide_WebEnglish_Sep23+(1).pdf "Virginia Jaramillo: The Curvilinear Paintings, 1969–1975"] (Exhibition pamphlet), Menil Collection (2020)
• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LalBjWgVTo "Artist Talk {{!}} Virginia Jaramillo"] on YouTube (filmed interview with Virginia Jaramillo by Erin Dziedzic), Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (June 13, 2023)

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Category:1939 births

Category:Living people

Category:Artists from Los Angeles

Category:Otis College of Art and Design alumni

Category:American artists of Mexican descent

Category:Artists from El Paso, Texas

Category:20th-century American artists

Category:20th-century American women artists

Category:21st-century American artists

Category:21st-century American women artists