Alexandro SANTANA

Colonial Booty

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’re not sure whether it’s intentional or inadvertent. And then you discover he is the son of a notorious Dominican admiral, that the tyrannical dictator Trujillo was best man at his parents’ wedding, that his mother was a fabled high-society beauty, that he grew up on battleships and estancias before going, inevitably, to Brown. Even more surprisingly, Santana stayed in Providence for graduate studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he received his degree in architecture, soon plying his trade in Manhattan and his adopted city of Savannah, where he eventually set up his own firm. Astonishingly, in this era of CAD, he draws every detail entirely by hand. Considering his tweeds, his bow ties, his drawl and debonair dress, it is perhaps not surprising to learn that Santana’s architectural taste is strongly neo-classical, inspired by the vernacular Palladianism of antebellum Georgia, with of course a touch of the Postmodern. Santana’s detailed and decorous architectural plans for his clients are complemented by drawings created for solely for himself -- exotic imaginary cityscapes and urban fantasias, like the dreams of Sir John Soane channeled through Aldo Rossi or John Hejduk...

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’...

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’re not sure whether it’s intentio...

You meet the Spanish artist Alexandro Santana and you think, cripes, can he be for real? So handsome, so flamboyant, so seductive, so amusing -- you’...

Steve DiBenedetto Reverse Epiphany, 2015 Oil on linen 20 x 18 x 1 inches Signed verso

John Hitchcock uses the print medium with its long history of social and political commentary to explore relationships of community, land, and culture. Hitchcock’s works on paper an...

This abstract oil painting by late Houston artist Dick Wray expresses a striking kinetic energy. Thick layers of paint foster a remarkable tactility commonly found in Dick Wray’s art...

Mystery Artist Untitled, 20th Century Oil on canvas 38 x 36 x 1 1/2 in.