Comprised of forty pieces of artwork, including paintings, prints, and drawings, the exhibition provides an exciting retrospective of a prolific, innovative artist and community leader. DaCunha, who originally hails from Bogotá, Colombia, has a storied history in Delaware, teaching at the University of Delaware for nearly 40 years and exhibiting at several local and regional institutions, including the Delaware Art Museum.
DaCunha worked in many mediums, including acrylic paint, oil paint, and graphite, and his influences are wide-ranging, featuring a number of artistic luminaries. He counts Spanish artists such as Francisco de Goya as stylistic influences, while writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe, along with femme fatale films, theater, music, and mythology—both classic and ones of his own making—largely inspired him thematically. In fact, daCunha was surrounded by art as a child. His mother was a musician, and his father was a diplomat, artist, and theater manager. It was through his father that he got to know the poet Pablo Neruda and famed artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. In a 1984 interview in The Review, a University of Delaware publication, daCunha says, “I made a little drawing for [Rivera]…and he gave me a drawing of a clown’s head which is now one of my most valuable possessions.”
Julio daCunha: Modernizing Myths
Julio daCunha: Modernizing Myths was organized by the Delaware Art Museum and Olivia Armandroff through the support of the Alfred Appel, Jr. Curatorial Fellowship. This exhibition is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on www.DelawareScene.com.
