Emilio Cruz

Emilio Cruz
Emilio Cruz in his studio on the Lower East Side, New York City, 1965.
Born	Emilio Antonio Cruz March 15, 1938 The Bronx, a New York City borough
Died	10 December 2004 (2004-12-11) (aged 66) New York City, NY USA
Nationality	United States of America
Occupation	Artist
Website	emiliocruz.com

Emilio Antonio Cruz (March 15, 1938 – December 10, 2004) was an African-American artist of Cuban descent who lived most of his life in New York City. His work is held in several major museums in the United States.

Emilio Antonio Cruz was an African American of Cuban descent. He was born in the Bronx on March 15, 1938. He studied at the Art Students League and The New School in New York City, and finally at the Seong Moy School of Painting and Graphic Arts in Provincetown, Massachusetts. As a young artist in the 1960s, Cruz was connected with other artists who were applying abstract expressionism concepts to figurative art such as Lester Johnson, Bob Thompson and Jan Muller. He combined human and animal figures with imagery from archaeology and natural history to create disturbing, dreamlike paintings. Cruz received a John Jay Whitney Fellowship and awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation and from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Cruz moved to Chicago and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago during the 1970s, where he exhibited widely and was represented by the Walter Kelly Gallery. He wrote two plays, Homeostasis: Once More the Scorpion and The Absence Held Fast to Its Presence. These were first performed at the Open Eye Theater in New York in 1981, and later were included in the World Theater Festival in Nancy and Paris, France and in Italy. In 1982 he returned to New York where he began to exhibit again. In the late 1980s he resumed teaching at the Pratt Institute and at New York University.

Emilio Antonio Cruz died from pancreatic cancer on December 10, 2004 at St. Vincent's Hospital, aged 66.

Harry Rand, Curator of 20th Century Painting and Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, described Emilio Cruz as one of the important pioneers of American Modernism of the 1960s for his fusion of Abstract Expressionism with figuration. Geno Rodriquez, Curator and Executive Director of The Alternative Museum, wrote in 1985, "Emilio Cruz, is a brilliant and impassioned artist whose current paintings are monumental, imbued with intelligence, fury and an apt sense of irony. They reflect the turbulent world within which we live."