Pages 1 to 10 Pages 11 to 20 Pages 21 to 30 Pages 31 to 40 Pages 41 to 50 Pages 51 to 60 Pages 61 to 70 Pages 71 to 80 Pages 81 to 90 Pages 91 to 100 Pages 101 to 110 Appendix 1 to 13

BACKBook Sections NEXT

97


As he recalled his Mexico days years later, he wrote, “These paintings showed a departure from my usual high horizon landscape themes and embraced surreal and fantasy ideas. I was greatly influenced by Orozco and other Mexican muralists, as well as by Mayan and other indigenous art, particularly in the Yucatan area…I made a break from landscape and began working in a more personal manner. I drew imaginary figurines, based on pre-Columbian art but also involved with modern advertising imagery. This evolved into two-dimensional icons -- magazines and catalogues.”
The renderings period thus descended from those long, productive periods in Mexico.


Los Novios, 1996

98


In the pastel “Los Novios” he depicts an enigmatic and possibly dramatic confrontation of a possibly Hispanic man and woman, but they share the scene with an ordinary paper grocery bag and a bottle he dug up in Sacramento, and these homely elements restrain and confound the expressionism.
Not a passive traveler like me, the aimless road-lover, Reich wanted to find a stimulating, comfortable and very cheap place to work. Not a sight-seer. Natural wonders hardly ever figured in his work.
His respect for and fascination with Mexican history, culture and art were buttressed by his reading all of blind Prescott’s great, intensely visual “Conquest of Mexico.” Reich speculated that Mexico’s earthquakes were caused by “all of that which seems to be alive…under not Mexico City, but Tenochtitlan.” He felt guilty about going to bull fights, but he made drawings of brave bulls.

BACKBook Sections NEXT