Biography

Hector Anchundia is a Neoexpressionist concentrated in figurative art. The female figure embodies the principal object of Anchundia’s work, giving him the ability to play with movement and lend form to his compositions. Born in Vinces, Ecuador on April 17, 1942, Anchundia studied at the Universidad Central del Ecuador and Escuela National de Bellas Artes in Quito. His first exhibition was in 1969 at the Museu da Republica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Anchundia remains an artist of the tropics, “loud, colorful, and full of life,” visible in the reds, oranges, and yellows used in his work.

His arrival to New York in the late 1970’s, however, was transformative, and his paintings evolved from naturalist depictions to abstract forms of the human figure. Aiming to create works of exceptional poetic sensibility has kept Anchudia in a state of perpetual evolution as a painter. Figures, colors, and shadows all reflect the artist’s emotions, moods, anxieties, and dreams, and signal his fascination for the display of power and confidence in body language, as well as the expressiveness of the eyes.

A talented draftsman, Anchundia innovates with forms, themes and ideas; moreover, his experimentation opens his work to political, philosophical and even religious interpretations. He has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, New Jersey City University, the Casa de la Cultura, Guayaquil (1986), Museo Arqueológico del Banco del Pacifico, Guayaquil (1997), and the Consulado General del Ecuador, New York (1999) and elsewhere.