Man’s Best Friend
John Nieto
Created : 1989
Donated : 1994
Medium : Painting/Oil
Dimensions: 5″x12″
Located: 3rd Floor,Rotunda
Man’s Best Friend is a triptych that speaks of the unwavering loyalty and bond that often exists between a dog and his master. The piece is characteristic of Nieto’s distinctive painting style, which incorporates dramatic, bold brushstrokes of intensely rich and often vibrantly electric colors. His densely painted and textured surfaces often create a visceral dynamic between canvas surface and the painted image. The range and versatility of Nieto’s style and medium can be noted in his etchings, lithographs, silkscreen prints, and drawings in which he employs classic linear techniques to create images of immense detail. He has also created many bronze sculptures.
Nieto’s paintings are part of the permanent collections of the New Mexico Capitol Art Foundation in Santa Fe, the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts also in Santa Fe, and the Heard Museum in Phoenix. He has exhibited internationally in galleries and museums from Santa Fe to New York and in Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Bujumbura, Burundi, and La Paz, Bolivia. Nieto prepares each summer for his annual exhibition in Santa Fe’s Indian Market and one-person exhibition at Ventana Fine Art Gallery. Each spring he holds a one-person exhibition in New York at J. Cacciola Gallery.
Nieto’s work clearly displays the inexhaustible range and variety the artist finds in his subject matter—his surroundings, the land, its people and its creatures. His paintings are about the land and its creatures, yet extreme emotion and drama project beyond the flat image. In speaking about his work, Nieto explains, “I still use the figure, but it is not necessarily the message. The longer you look, the more it reveals of life and our spectrum of feelings.”
