Virginia Jaramillo

Virginia Jaramillo, (b. 1939) is an interdisciplinary abstractionist, creating sculptural and paper works. However, she is best known for her large paintings. Born in El Paso, Texas and raised in East Los Angeles, CA, Jaramillo was interested in becoming an archaeologist. Her interest in the Earth and cosmologies has since become an integral aspect of her practice.

Reacting against the expressive, gestural painterliness of abstract expressionism, Jaramillo’s formal compositions are aesthetically and conceptually linked to ‘hard-edged painting’ as well as the early development of minimalism. She is particularly interested in the line and what a line can do, and how much weight it can hold. Jaramillo’s early works, of which It Goes On is a part, illustrate Jaramillo’s interest in line and color. Intensely vivid fields of color mixed by hand are disrupted by precise blocks and lines. Her curvilinear paintings reflect Jaramillo’s interest in Japanese woodblock prints and her interest in the concept of ‘Ma,’ which is concerned with negative space.

Shortly after this body of work was completed, Jaramillo was selected for participation in The De Luxe Show (1971) in Houston, Texas, one of the first racially integrated exhibitions in the United States that included artists such as Sam Gilliam. Jaramillo was also included in the 1972 Whitney Annual. Then, Jaramillo pivoted to more minimal, painterly abstractions.

Virginia Jaramillo studied at Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, from 1958–61. Jaramillo lives and works in New York. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; The Menil Collection, Houston, TX; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.