Episode 444 / Larry Madrigal is a Mexican-American painter based in Phoenix, Arizona. Originally from Los Angeles, where his parents stayed after migrating from Mexico, Madrigal spent many of his early summers in Colima where his extended family lives. In 1998, during his elementary years, his family left California and moved to Phoenix where they remain to this day. Madrigal studied at Arizona state University and received his BFA in 2017. During this time, he developed a skill for traditional figurative and portrait painting through his close relationship with emeritus professor, Jerry Schutte, and his wife Anne Schutte. Jerry’s strong knowledge of figurative and landscape painting combined with Anne’s masterful sense of abstraction and gesture were significant influences. After graduation Madrigal continued in portraiture for several years culminating in his first museum group exhibition “Body Language: Figuration in Modern and Contemporary Art” at the Tucson Museum of Art in 2016. In 2017, Madrigal returned to ASU for his MFA. Besides this new venture, he and his wife decided to start a family, and his daughter was born two weeks before the start of the program. Madrigal’s initial artistic ambitions were thwarted by the new and urgent demands of parenthood. He inevitably found himself paying close attention to daily rhythms with more profound questions. Finally after two years of resisting, he eventually surrendered to this calling and moved towards a focus on the quotidian. The commonplace became his arena for painting, a strong move away from the current focus on identity politics prevalent in academia at that time.This newly found obsession with the mundane led Madrigal on a quest to rehabilitate the genre in it’s purest form. His work would now be marked by “a suspension and celebration of the precariousness by which our most mundane daily rituals are balanced on a precipice just above total anarchy.” — Ben Lee Ritchie Handler, Global Director Nicodim Gallery. During his MFA Madrigal was a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Artist Grant and a finalist in the AXA XL Art Prize. Six months after graduation in 2020, Madrigal had his first solo exhibition, “Scattered Daydream” at Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles. Since then, he has had solo shows in New York, Los Angeles, Bucharest, and Madrid (Forthcoming), along with group shows in Paris, Tokyo, and Tel Aviv. Madrigal’s paintings have continued to focus on the relatable nature of the human experience from his earnest and contemplative perspective, adopting a sincere attitude towards figuration, with a touch of darkness and humor. He currently lives in Phoenix Arizona with his wife and two kids, and works out of his downtown studio.
