Alfredo Arreguín

Alfredo Arreguín (January 30, 1935 – April 24, 2023) was a Mexican-American painter. For sixty years, he worked out of his adopted home of Seattle, Washington, producing his signature style of pattern paintings that sourced his Mexican culture and his experience in the Pacific Northwest.[1] He was known as a leader in the Latin American art scene.

Arreguín studied painting from the age of 9 and pursued architecture as a young student at Mexico City's prominent Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, where Frida Kahlo studied several decades earlier.[2] Kahlo remained a lifelong muse for Arreguín, who painted her likeness into his work more than 100 times over the years.[3]

After immigrating to the U.S. at 24 years old, Arreguín was drafted to serve in the Korean War. He returned to Seattle and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in painting from the University of Washington, where he was part of a 1960s generation of artists on the campus that included painters Chuck Close and Roger Shimomura and glass artist Dale Chihuly. It was at the University of Washington that Arreguín met the poet and writer Tess Gallagher. Gallagher's husband, the author Raymond Carver, would later describe Arreguín as a painter who worked "like a locomotive," a reference to the long days he spent painting.[4]

In 1980, Arreguín received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts fellowship.[5] In 1995, the federal government of Mexico awarded him the Ohtli Award for promoting Mexican culture outside of Mexico. His style relied on small brush strokes that built up to cover large canvases, which meant that an individual painting could take weeks or months.[6]

Arreguin's work is held in the permanent collection of museums around the world, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery (United States) and the National Academy of Sciences. His influence on Latin American art has led to his work being acquired by the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, The Mexican Museum in San Francisco and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. The U.S. State Department holds his work in embassies in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico and Karachi, Pakistan.[7]

Arreguín had his first solo show in 1977, at the The Mexican Museum. He went on to have more than 40 solo exhibitions, including a number of retrospectives.[7] His most recent retrospective was the 2022 show "Arreguín: Painter from the New World" at the Museum of Northwest Art.

He was represented by Linda Hodges Gallery in Seattle, Washington.[8]

He shared his basement studio with the painter Susan R. Lytle, who he was married to for 49 years.[9]