Erik d'Azevedo
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Erik d'Azevedo | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1948 (age 77–78) |
| Alma mater | California College of the Arts, Oakland |
| Years active | 1970s–2000s |
| Known for | Painting, Poetry |
| Movement | Post-War California, Bay Area Abstract Expressionism |
Erik d'Azevedo (born 1948) is an American artist and poet who has been active in the San Francisco Bay Area art scene since the late 1970s.
D'Azevedo was born in Oakland, California. His father, Warren, was an anthropologist and academic who founded the anthropology department at the University of Nevada, Reno. During his lifetime, Warren was acknowledged as a pioneer of the study of African art, particularly with his groundbreaking book, The Traditional Artist in African Societies (Indiana University Press, 1974). His mother, Kathleen, is a retired anthropologist whose scholarship focuses primarily on child psychology. When he was six years old, d'Azevedo traveled with his parents and sister to Liberia to live among the Gola people as his father conducted fieldwork for his dissertation.[1] This experience, in addition to his father's ethnographic work on Native American Washoe culture of the Great Basin, had a profound impact on the development of Erik's worldview.[2]
Education
D'Azevedo initially attended the University of Nevada, Reno majoring in social sciences, although during this time he took a few art courses, notably with sculptor John McCracken, who encouraged him to leave Nevada for an art center like New York, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.[3] While in Reno in the mid-1960s, he worked as a field crew member for archeological surveys in eastern Nevada.[4]
Following McCracken's advise, he returned to the Bay Area and went on to receive a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the California College of Arts and Craft (now California College of the Arts) in 1974, and remained at the school for graduate studies, receiving a Master of Fine Art degree in 1976. At CCAC, he studied with leading Bay Area artists such as Franklin Williams, Judith Linhares, Roy De Forest, Arthur Okamura and Jay DeFeo, whose emphasis on resisting "the hierarchy of material," resonated with him. He studied privately with DeFeo after leaving CCAC.