Raul Gutierrez: A Texan’s view of Yesterday’s Texas

January 18 - April 04,2020

The exhibition, entitled A Texan’s view of Yesterday’s Texas, with over 30 pieces, will primarily feature Gutierrez’s oil paintings, with evocative titles including,  “The Chase,” “Cowboys in Trouble,” “Pony Express,” and “Comanche,” but will also include some of his luminous watercolors and delicate charcoal drawings. The authenticity of Raul Gutierrez’s  paintings, featuring cowboys and Indians and indigenous Texas wildlife, evoke an earlier, almost-mythical time in Texas.  “I guess it’s just in my blood,” says Gutierrez, who started exploring the small ranches around his hometown of Laredo as a young boy and later had a ranch of his own.  “I’ve always been fascinated with the cowboy life.”  That fascination has stayed with him throughout his life and he has spent years studying the people and wildlife of Texas and the greater Southwest, researching extensively and visiting ranches and reservations. Born in Laredo, Gutierrez’s family moved to San Antonio where he attended high school and won an art scholarship to the Warren Hunter School of Commercial and Fine Arts.  From that time on he painted, but also had a myriad of other careers throughout the years, including joining the U.S. Army and serving in Korea, working as an illustrator at the Pentagon, and an eighteen-year career as a political cartoonist and illustrator at the San Antonio Light newspaper. Gutierrez’s work has appeared in galleries across the country, particularly in the American Southwest, including multiple solo shows in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado.  His paintings are included in private collections by iconic Texans, including the late President Lyndon Baines Johnson, former Texas governor John Connally, and country and western singer, George Strait. The Beeville Art Museum, created and operated by the Joe Barnhart Foundation, is first and foremost a teaching museum, providing cultural and educational opportunities for the citizens of Bee County and surrounding areas.  Cited by Texas Monthly magazine as one of the “great small towns for art,” Beeville, with a population of approximately 13,000, is home to one of the most ambitious art and educational programs in Texas. In addition to exhibiting works by some of Texas’s most renowned artists, as well as selections from private collections and major museums across the state, the Beeville Art Museum provides docent-led tours and art classes for children and adults and workshops for Beeville educators at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Opening: January 18, 2020 | 12-2 pm

Beeville Art Museum 401 East Fannin
Beeville, TX 78104
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