Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art & Design

The first comprehensive look at the nearly seven-decades-long career of contemporary Mexican American artist Virginia Jaramillo

Over the course of her career, Virginia Jaramillo (b. 1939) has forged a pathway to exploring ideas and concepts of space through abstract paintings and handmade paper works influenced by her myriad interests including physics, the cosmos, mythology, ancient cultures, and modernist design philosophies. This beautifully illustrated volume demonstrates that despite having been historically excluded from the canon of American abstraction, Jaramillo has made profound contributions to the field.

Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence documents more than 60 works including early paintings that pushed the depth of the painted surface to its very limits; her innovations in the centuries-old practice of handmade papermaking; and recent bodies of work, where Jaramillo engages in deep investigations into antiquity and architectural ruin through large-scale paintings. In addition to an overview of Jaramillo’s life and work, this comprehensive catalogue includes in-depth essays on the artist’s formative years in Los Angeles, her forty-year devotion to hand papermaking, and the recent resurgence of her painting practice. An interview with Jaramillo rounds out the volume.

Distributed for Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Exhibition Schedule:

MCA Chicago
(May 4, 2024--January 5, 2025)

Bechtler Museum
(February 6--June 8, 2025)

Erin Dziedzic is director of curatorial affairs at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.