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Harmonia Rosales

Master Narrative

A collection of work from contemporary Afro-Cuban American artist Harmonia Rosales.

This vibrant catalog presents the work of contemporary artist Harmonia Rosales. Featuring over twenty paintings and a monumental sculptural installation, Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative is the artist’s first major touring exhibition and first scholarly catalog of her work.

Los Angeles-based artist Harmonia Rosales is known for rewriting the master narrative of art history, from the perspective of an Afro-Cuban American woman in the twenty-first century. Her canvases seamlessly weave the tales and characters rooted in West African Yorùbá religion, Greek mythology, and Christianity with the canonical works and artistic techniques of the European Renaissance. Through her visual storytelling, Rosales presents the notion of human and cultural survival on her own terms—one that highlights the beauty and strength of Black people, particularly women, while touching upon grand narratives of creation, tragedy, survival, and transcendence.

This beautifully illustrated publication includes a catalog of works in the exhibition, a biography of the artist, and new essays by noted scholars in their fields. These essays explore themes ranging from storytelling and narrative to gender and depiction of beauty to race and diaspora.
 

96 pages | 30 color plates | 7 3/4 x 9 3/4 | © 2023

Art: American Art


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Reviews

"The first scholarly collection of Rosales' work, the new catalog features over 20 paintings and a sculptural installation. The illustrated catalog also includes a biography of the artist and several scholarly essays exploring themes ranging from storytelling to depictions of beauty, race and diaspora."

The Current

"Twenty-two of Rosales' works — ranging from intimate portraits to a decorated expanse of curved wood, suspended from a gallery ceiling, that suggests the hull of a Middle Passage slave ship — are on display through June 25 at the Brooks in "Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative," the artist's first major museum show (complete with 100-page museum catalog). [...] Rosales' work celebrates Black beauty with sumptuous, colorful, classically 'realistic' paintings that re-cast the mythological and biblical narratives of Michelangelo and other 'Old Masters' with orishas (Yoruba deities) and other figures largely drawn from the Afro-Cuban traditions of Rosales' family heritage."

Commercial Appeal

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