Jesse Amado American, b. 1951

B. San Antonio, TX, 1951

Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, he received his BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin and his BFA and MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Amado's choice of materials, including paint, wood, felt, and light, expands the dimensional constraints of painting. By utilizing forms, images, materials, fashions, and media, he attempts to produce commentaries on the ambiguities of modern and contemporary culture. His work is grounded in his Mexican American heritage, South Texas aesthetics, and conceptual practices anchored in social realities, history, and politics. Amado is recognized as one of the pioneering conceptual Latino artists.

“When I settle into the practice of art, past, and current, the one conceit that persistently unfolds is the desire to investigate the arc of the transmutation. This reflects my keen interest in the zeitgeist and the inherent dynamic qualities it possesses that address the trends and thoughts of periods of time. My work endorses the quality of change and how limitless and liberating it can be for an artist. It resists the formulaic and instead embraces the free association and process that reflects the Freudian play of the creative act.”

Amado’s work has been selected for numerous group and solo exhibitions, such as Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. He has been featured and reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Art in America, and Glasstire. 

In 1995, he was selected by Robert Storr as the first recipient of the international residency program Artpace San Antonio, along with Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Annette Messager. Amado received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to attend Artist-in-Residence, Fabric Workshop, and Museum, Philadelphia, PA. He was awarded the International Artist-in-Residence Program of Gwangju, South Korea, and the 2016 Berlin Residency Program by Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum in partnership with Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany. His work is in various public collections throughout Texas and the United States, including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, CA; the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, TX; the Dallas Museum of Art in Dallas, TX; the Blanton Museum in Austin, TX; the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, TX; Ruby City in San Antonio, TX; the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX; and El Museo Del Barrio in New York, NY.

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