Juan Davila (artist)
| Juan Davila | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1946 Santiago, Chile |
| Nationality | Chilean/Australian |
| Known for | Painting |
| Awards | Benalla nude art prize (2014) |
Juan Davila (born 1946, Santiago, Chile) is a Chilean/Australian artist and writer who migrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1974. He is represented in major collections throughout Australia, as well as New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo in Spain.
Davila was born in Chile and studied at Colegio del Verbo Divino in Santiago 1951-1963. He studied Law at the University of Chile (1965–69) and subsequently attended the Fine Arts School of the University of Chile (1970–72). His first solo exhibition in his native country was Latinamerican Artistic Coordination at CAL Gallery, Santiago in 1974. In that year he moved to Melbourne.
Davila is primarily a painter but he has also exhibited drawings and installation art. He is prolific and has exhibited throughout Australia, South and North America and Europe. He was included in the 1982 and 1984 Biennales of Sydney, the 1998 São Paulo Biennial and the 2007 Documenta 12 in Germany.
His work was given a survey exhibition at Canberra's Drill Hall Gallery in 2002, and major retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2006 and the National Gallery of Victoria in 2007.
His work has been called "a collage of quotations" and references other artists, psychoanalysis and pornography.
His work Stupid as a Painter was seized by police on the basis of alleged obscenity at the Fourth Biennale of Sydney in 1982.
His 1994 painting The Liberator Simón Bolívar led to a formal protest by Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador to the Chilean government.
He has also addressed themes of Australian politics and history, including unflattering portrayals of politicians like Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and a sexualised, scatological reworking of the Burke and Wills story. In 2002 he had an exhibition called Woomera themed around the desert immigration detention centre. Critic Robert Nelson said that this exhibition demonstrated Davila's "resonant social voice" speaking out against an Australia in which "the unethical is normalized".
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