Candida Alvarez is an esteemed artist and educator whose creative practice spans five decades. Her dynamic, multilayered compositions are intricate assemblages of visual elements drawn from her personal experiences. Deeply engaged with the relationships among color, texture, and form, Alvarez explores both the tactile and emotional dimensions of painting. Widely recognized as one of the most innovative and experimental painters of her generation, her kaleidoscopic abstract and figurative works interweave personal and cultural memory, references to art history, linguistic play, and scenes from everyday life.
Raised in Brooklyn by parents who migrated from Puerto Rico, Alvarez began establishing her artistic voice in the late 1970s. While earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Fordham University, she concurrently served as a curator at El Museo del Barrio, where she also debuted in her first group exhibition, Confrontación: Ambiente y Espacio, in 1977. In the early 1980s, she was a participant in the International Studio and Workspace Program at PS1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1) and later joined the foundational Artist-in-Residence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem. These formative experiences played a pivotal role in her artistic development, providing her with critical connections to a broader artistic community, collaborative opportunities, and rich dialogue.
Alvarez (b.1955, Brooklyn, NY) received her MFA from Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT in 1997. Alvarez is the subject of a major 50-year career survey exhibition titled Circle, Point, Hoop at El Museo del Barrio, NY on view April–August 2025. Other notable solo exhibitions include the Monira Foundation at Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL (2024); moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2023, 2020); Gavlak, Palm Beach, FL (2019); Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL (2017); Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL (2012); New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT (1996); and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY (1992). Notable group exhibitions include Real Monsters in Bold Colors: Bob Thompson and Candida Alvarezat Gray Gallery, NY (2025); Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s–Today, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2022-2023), and ICA Boston (2023); no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2022); To Weave the Sky: Textile Abstractions from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, El Espacio23, Miami, FL (2023-2024); The Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles (2023-2024); Galerie Lelong, New York, NY (2023); School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL (2022); Z33 Gallery, Belgium (2021-2022); El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY (2021); DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL (2018); Kemper Museum, Kansas City, MO (2017); and The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA (1990). Alvarez is included in several major LATINx-focused shows, such as El Vaivén: 21st Century Art of Puerto Rico and its Diaspora at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Katherine E. Nash Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2025) and Diasporican Abstraction: Identities Beyond Representation, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR (2026).
Public collections include the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Peréz Art Museum Miami, FL; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Denver Art Museum, CO; El Museo de Barrio, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Seattle Art Museum, WA; LUMA Foundation, Arles, FR; and DePaul Art Museum, IL. Recent awards and fellowships include the 2024 Trellis Art Fund Grant, 2022 Ford Mellon Foundation Latinx Artist Fellowship, 2022 Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Art, the Helen Frankenthaler Award for painting in 2021, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2019. In 2023, Alvarez was artist in residence at the LUMA Foundation Arles, France and at Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, ME. As a celebrated educator, Alvarez taught Painting for 25 years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she is now Professor Emeritus, and was the Fall 2024 Alex Katz Chair in Painting at The Cooper Union in New York, NY. She lives and works between Chicago, IL and Baroda, MI.