The gallery itself deserves a shout-out. The Lobato exhibit is being presented as a celebration of Havu’s twentieth anniversary in its current location, a custom-designed, neo-modernist building by the artistically distinguished firm of Humphries Poli Architects. A built-from-the-ground-up gallery is unusual anywhere, especially in Denver (the only other one is Space Gallery), and not only has owner Bill Havu kept this one going for two decades, but he recently marked his 45th year in the art business in Colorado.

Exterior of the William Havu Gallery, designed by Humphries Poli Architects.
Courtesy of William Havu Gallery
Havu moved to Denver the year before HMK folded and opened his own fine-print publisher, Art Group Partners, in 1982, commissioning local artists to make monoprints. AGP had a showroom at 17th and Park avenues, on the second floor of the building where the Robischon Gallery was then located. In 1986, Havu moved to what would much later become RiNo, redubbing his showroom William Havu Fine Art. Scandals in the limited-edition print world, in which works were easily forged, soon led to the ascendency of one-off prints. In 1991 he opened 1/1, with the name referring to the way a monoprint is typically marked. Havu specialized in the form.

"Peru" (from left), "Lugar/Place" and "Tratando de Recordar/Trying to Remember," by Emilio Lobato, oil and collage on panel.
Nick Ryan, William Havu Gallery
LoDo had been pretty rundown when Havu moved there; riding his bike through an even more neglected area that today is the Golden Triangle, he happened on a sign announcing a proposed development, Grand Cherokee Lofts, that was to include a mid-rise, a row of townhouses and a freestanding retail component.
Working with architect Joe Poli, Havu oversaw the design of the interior of that component so that it had a large main area with very high ceilings, a mezzanine for the office, a basement for storage and a sculpture garden in the back. The William Havu Gallery opened at 1040 Cherokee Street in September 1998. Its premiere show was Views of Solitude, which included a large sampling of the work of longtime Denver artist Emilio Lobato.

"Miel/Honey" (left), "Talisman" and "Polvo Astral/Stardust," by Emilio Lobato, oil and collage on panel.
Nick Ryan, William Havu Gallery
One of the reasons this approach worked was because of Lobato’s consistency over the course of his career.
“Looking at it all together, I can see that I’ve used the same forms, like circles, over and over,” he notes. While that’s true, every time he goes to the creativity well, he manages to pull up a new formulation of the same idea, orchestrating various geometric shapes — not just circles, but lines, bars, rectangles and squares — to make his atmospheric paintings, collages, prints and constructions. Not everything is dark, but Lobato prefers deep colors, in particular black and red, so a lot of the paintings have a contemplative quality, if not a moodiness. Also noteworthy is his use of book pages and covers as elements in both his collages and constructions.

"Renace Una Sombra/Rebirth of a Shadow" (from left), "Hoy II/Today II," "Algunas Veces/Sometimes" and "Hoy/Today," by Emilio Lobato, oil and collage on linen.
Nick Ryan, William Havu Gallery
Another way that Lobato’s output reflects Colorado is the influence of earlier modernists in the state, notably Mary Chenoweth, with whom Lobato studied at Colorado College, and one of Chenoweth’s other students, Dale Chisman. “I loved Dale’s work,” he says, “and sometimes I pointedly responded to it in the 1990s.”
When I think about the history of abstraction in Colorado, Lobato is one of the first artists who comes to mind.
His solo celebrating the twenty years that the William Havu Gallery has been in the Golden Triangle demonstrates why everyone else should recognize that, too.
Emilio Lobato: Retro-Spectacle, through November 10, William Havu Gallery, 1040 Cherokee Street, 303-893-2360, williamhavugallery.com.