Amon Carter Museum of American Art Acquires "Royal-ty" By Narsiso Martinez
Charlie James Gallery is delighted to announce the acquisition of Narsiso Martinez’s Royal-ty by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, acquired with the support of Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo and The Dorothea Leonhardt Fund at the Communities Foundation of Texas, Inc. The gallery wishes to thank Maggie Adler, Allison Nicks, and of course Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo for their enthusiastic and generous support of Narsiso and his work!
Royal-ty is inspired by the California produce labels of the 1930s and 40s, where it was common to romanticize images of agricultural landscapes while omitting any reference to the people working those fields. Narsiso came across an illustration of the Corona Citrus Association “Royal” label dating from those years, and he decided to contrast part of that found image with his own memory of life in the fields.
The original Corona Citrus Association label depicts a queen raising her left arm holding an orange while the right arm hangs at her side holding a branch with citrus fruits. A larger than life size orange and lemon occupy the foreground next to the queen while in the background a beautiful blue green caricature of an orange plantation extends into the far distance.
Narsiso's painting depicts the queen from the “Royal” label again on the left side of the composition, raising her left arm as in the original label. In Narsiso’s painting, the queen is seen holding not an orange in her left hand but a broken scale, inspired by Lady Justice. The balance of Narsiso's composition is occupied by various groups of farm workers seen during their lunch time (including a self-portrait of the artist in the foreground bottom center-right). In the piece, Narsiso brings a dose of reality to the romanticized version of farm life depicted in the original label. The scenes of farm workers recall Narsiso's own lived experience, and serve to highlight the difficult conditions agricultural workers continue to work in today. Narsiso’s piece is executed atop a series of found produce boxes collected from grocery stores around his home and studio in Long Beach, CA.
Narsiso Martinez (b. 1977, Oaxaca, Mexico) migrated to the United States when he was 20 years old. He attended Evans Community Adult School and completed high school in 2006 at the age of 29. To finance his education, Martinez worked in the apple orchards of Eastern Washington for nine seasons. He earned an Associate of Arts degree in 2009 from Los Angeles City College. In the fall of 2012 Narsiso earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University Long Beach. In the spring of 2018 he received a Master of Fine Arts degree in drawing and painting from California State University Long Beach, and was awarded the prestigious Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship in Painting and Sculpture. Narsiso’s work is in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum at the University of Oregon, and in numerous private collections. Martinez lives and works in Long Beach, CA.
