One-Man Show for Mexican Artist Raul Anguiano Broadens Focus at ArtSpace Gallery

Gallery director Scott Canty was slow to admit it, but the retrospective of works by Mexican artist Raul Anguiano at ArtSpace Gallery in Woodland Hills may mark a significant step for the young gallery.

After all, since it came under the direction of the city’s Cultural Affairs Department last September, ArtSpace has focused on thematic group shows of Los Angeles-area artists.

With Monday’s opening of Anguiano’s show, the gallery embarks on its first exhibition of a single artist, while tentatively broadening its scope beyond strictly local works.

“I looked at the work, and I thought it would be a good exchange, and be something different from what we normally do,” Canty said.

The collection of about 60 works examines the career and often astonishingly varied styles of Anguiano, 75, a painter, sculptor and muralist. Early landscapes hang not far from raw Cubist designs, tapestries and the more graceful portraiture of his recent past.

The Mexican consulate had approached Canty, who is also director of the other two galleries under the city’s aegis, with the idea of exhibiting Anguiano. But it had been difficult organizing the show, particularly since the Mexican government, it turned out, would not let any national treasures leave the country.

A Pasadena collector and dealer of Mexican and African art, the Lodi Art Gallery, came to the rescue by furnishing a large part of the show.

Recently, as Canty busily adjusted track lights and touched up walls with paint, all but a few of the works were already positioned.

ArtSpace isn’t about to abandon its spotlighting of emerging and semi-professional area artists, Canty said. He hopes to organize a group sculpture exhibit soon.

And the insurance recently obtained by the gallery will also mean that professional artists will be found more often on its walls.

“Before that, it was hard to get professional artists to put on an exhibit here,” Canty said.

Raul Anguiano paintings, sketches, lithographs, sculpture and tapestry, Monday through Aug. 17, ArtSpace Gallery, 21800 Oxnard St., Woodland Hills; (818) 716-2786. Open noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

ON THE ROAD: After 15 years of showing and boosting photography on Melrose Avenue, the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery has relocated to Santa Monica, opening its new space with a dual exhibition of Diane Arbus and Alfred Stieglitz.

Gallery owner Hawkins said the unexpected and perhaps risky move from its long-established home was inspired by what he sees as a splintering Los Angeles art scene, modeled on New York City. The galleries in Santa Monica are looking more and more like the establishment art world of New York’s 57th Street, he said, whereas the La Brea-Melrose scene reflects the avant-garde sensibilities of SoHo.

The move to Santa Monica is designed to attract established local art buyers newly interested in photography. “I really want to be on 57th Street,” Hawkins said. “I think that for the next two years, there is a window open for painting collectors to seriously examine photography as a medium for their own self-expression. There’s so much energy from Sen. Jesse Helms, with his pursuit of moral superiority, and many others, that everybody has accepted that it is art.”

The current exhibit is the first local Stieglitz gallery show since 1975.

Will his clientele from cities such as Pasadena and Burbank follow him and his 4,000-piece collection to the beach? “I’m terrified,” he said. “I’m absolutely weak-kneed. It’s an incredible rush to put 15 years of hard work on the gambling table.”

Photography by Diane Arbus and Alfred Stieglitz, through Aug. 4, at the new G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, 910 Colorado Ave., Santa Monica; (213) 934-5558 or 550-1504. Open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

BIG BOX OFFICE: It should hardly be surprising that the success of the “Dick Tracy” movie would somehow spill over into the art world. At the Steve Stein Gallery in Woodland Hills, signed lithographs from 1979 by original “Dick Tracy” artist and creator Chester Gould are generating excitement.

Owner Steve Stein said he purchased the lithographs 10 years ago, and has sold most of the collection since then, about 80% of it going to members of the movie industry. The investment wasn’t exactly the result of a premonition. His cousin is Art Linson, the film’s executive producer.

Priced at $4,800 each, the lithographs depict the fictional crime-fighter wearing his bright yellow fedora and talking into his wrist-radio. In pencil, the late artist signed: “Best Wishes, Chester Gould.”

Elsewhere in the gallery are works by Southwest painter Markus Pierson and other artists. Stein said the “Dick Tracy” works are not out of place. Early comic artists like Gould influenced the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. “It does represent one of the true art forms that are American,” he said.

The Stein Gallery’s “Dick Tracy” lithograph collection is still not quite the departure last year’s exhibition of “Batman” artwork by creator Bob Kane was at the Galerie Michael. The Rodeo Drive gallery is usually home to works from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“This show appealed to a popular audience that we don’t normally get,” said Dan Cohn, manager of Galerie Michael. “It was a mob scene. People had to wait in line to get in. It was certainly a new experience for us.”

Cohn added that the July, 1989, “Batman” show, featuring original paintings and signed lithographs, did not mark a change in direction, and that the gallery’s regular clientele was not offended by its excursion into pop art. “That was our first foray into that situation,” Cohn said. “And it was the result of personal association and coincidence. It really doesn’t represent a major shift in our concentration. We’re not opportunists of this kind of thing.”

Signed lithographs of “Dick Tracy” by Chester Gould, now showing at the Steve Stein Gallery, 13934 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; (818) 990-0777. Open Wednesday through Sunday.