Art Beat

Michael Paglia's brief sketches of what's happening in the Denver art scene.

Comments (0) By Michael Paglia Thursday, Sep 16 1999

Printmakers Portfolio, at William Havu Gallery, is midway through a month-long run. The show is a brief look at the stylistic development over the past five years of Emilio Lobato, one of the best abstractionists around.

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Although there are only a few older prints in the exhibit, they're enough to demonstrate the change in Lobato's preferred palette. The older pieces, from 1992 and 1994, are brightly colored. The newer prints, which were done in New Mexico between 1997 and 1999, are dark and somber in hue, like the monoprint "3-7-99," above.

There has also been a change in Lobato's approach to composition. Most of the older prints sport simple, roughly geometric shapes clustered in the center or arrayed across it, while the newer ones feature dense overlapping forms. Though each approach is distinct, they are also related, and both reveal the continuing positive influence of Lobato's teacher at Colorado College, the late Mary Chenoweth.

Lobato is too young to have been included in Part I of Colorado Abstraction: 1975-1999, (see this week's review on the preceding page). But surely it was an oversight that he was left out of the age-appropriate Part II. Lobato can take comfort in the fact that he is joined by George Woodman, Vance Kirkland, Herbert Bayer and Angelo di Benedetto, who are also missing in action in Arvada.