Raphael Montañez Ortiz

Who is Raphael Montañez Ortiz?

Raphael Montañez Ortiz is an American artist, educator, and founder of El Museo del Barrio. He is a graduate of Art and Design High School of New York City, and studied at Pratt Institute, where he began as a student of architecture, decided instead to become a visual artist, and received his BFA and MFA at Pratt Institute in 1964. He continued honing both his artistic skills and his formal education, finishing a doctorate in Fine Arts and Fine Arts in Higher Education at Teachers College of Columbia University. Ortiz's works are in the collection of the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York, the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia and the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas.

Ritual, coincidence, duality, transcendence, humanism, performance, gesture, religion and history are only a few of the subjects that the artist has addressed through his works. From the beginning of his career, perhaps his most important concern was avant-garde practice.