Shizu Saldamando, La Brownskin, Colored pencil and Chiyogami paper collage on paper, Paper: 40 x 32 inches, 2020. Purchased with funds provided by Karen R. Constine | Image courtesy of Charlie James Gallery
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has acquired La Brownskin, a portrait by CalArtian Shizu Saldamando (Art MFA 05).
La Brownskin is a colored pencil portrait of Sebastian Hernandez, also known as Brownskin Hazel, a multidisciplinary artist known in LA’s creative community. The work is a continuation of Saldamando’s signature lively portrait works, which serve as a “means to assert agency and reclaim representation for her subjects, who are her friends and fellow members of the Chicanx creative community in Los Angeles.”
“I gravitate to people who construct themselves as high art,” Saldamando said in a February 2020 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “They put themselves together in a style that they have honed out of economic necessity or cultural things. It’s people who are like art already.”
Saldamando’s work has been presented in various group and solo exhibitions in numerous venues, including the Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles (which represents Saldamando); Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Ariz.; and the Venice Biennale. Her paintings reside in the permanent collections of LACMA, the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, Calif.; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Ark.; and other museums and galleries.