On Sunday, May 1st, 2022, Angel Abreu ’91 displayed his art collection in the Von Auersperg Gallery. He created the artworks between 2014 and 2022, and they were all inspired by his interpretation of varying literature.
Mr. Abreu’s art career started before he attended Deerfield as a part of the Class of 1991. He became the youngest artist to ever have a painting in the Museum of Modern Art, at age fourteen. However, his interest in a literature-based art career began once he entered Deerfield, where he discovered a passion for reading and the outdoors. Mr. Abreu said, “It became really easy to make these connections between literature and art.” He majored in Comparative Literature and Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he began making works inspired by literature.
Not only an active artist, Mr. Abreu also teaches AP Studio Art and Topics Tutorial at Deerfield. To him, teaching is one of the most fundamental parts of his art process. He said, “I don’t know if the world needs any more artists, but we definitely need more teachers.”
His love for his work is reflected through the classes he teaches. Topics Tutorial student Julia Hioe ’22 shared that he often pauses and asks the students if they can “feel the energy from the piece.” Hioe added, “He is probably one of the most passionate teachers I have ever met.”
Students in the Topics Tutorial class worked with Mr. Abreu in creating a large, collaborative painting. For three weeks, he cooperated with and guided his students through the production of a Midsummer Night’s Dream inspired painting. The class constructed the wooden canvas and made the background of the piece using the characteristic style of Studio Kids Of Survival, the art studio that Mr. Abreu works for. The background of the piece was inspired by Felix Mendelssohn’s score of the play.
The painting was inspired by the flowers of Puck, which in the play caused love at first sight. Visual and Performing Arts Teacher Mercedes Taylor said that “everybody had a word in thinking [about] how they were going to arrange the flowers on the canvas.” The students used inks and watercolors to make the cosmos and explosions that make up the heart of the painting.
Many students and teachers were immediately moved by this piece. Philosophy and Religion Teacher Doug Kremm said he was drawn mainly “because of the bright colors.” Elsa Schuberth ’22 said, “[I] really liked what they painted on the sheet music, with the mixture of the colors.”
The painting directly to the right of the Midsummer Night’s Dream, Nocturne no. 2, was based on Chopin’s Nocturnes, which are short piano compositions inspired by the night. Mr. Abreu also paid homage to the artist James Whistler’s painting of Nocturne. Whistler used dark shades of colors on canvas, along with splashes of bright colors, similarly to Mr. Abreu. He was intentional in his positioning of the paintings in order to create a contrast between the bright explosions and the gradient of dark gray and black. Hioe said, “[The] bold strokes of yellow really made the painting pop.”
William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying, one of Mr. Abreu’s favorite books inspired another one of the paintings featured. The book has 53 chapters, with each chapter narrated by a different character. Conveying the sorrow of the book, the colors are muted and flowing, like a “sad orchestra,” said Mr. Abreu. The style of the painting is purposefully made similarly to Tim Burton’s movies, gothic and dark, yet expressive with its tones and colors.
During the summer of 2020, Mr. Abreu also created several smaller paintings inspired by Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. The letters “I” and “M” struck back to the civil rights movement, with the “I am a man, I am a woman” movement. Visual and Performing Arts Teacher Tim Trelease shared that he was intrigued by the “2D pushing towards the 3D” nature of the artworks.
In 2014, Mr. Abreu completed the first work in his showcase based on William Falkner’s novel The Wild Palms. The novel interweaves two narratives: a couple who embarks on a journey of passionate love, and a convict asked to rescue two people stranded in a flood. The overarching themes of grief and sorrow are highlighted in this large-scale painting. Due to the tragic resolution to their love, there are large elements of the color blue in the six paintings displayed on the right, signifying water. The story also introduced the theme of abortion so Mr. Abreu included a “notion of veil of truth.”
The last painting in the gallery was inspired by Walden, a novel written by Henry David Thoreau. With his stay in Walden Pond for two years, Thoreau constructed a little shed to make a year round study of nature. When Mr. Abreu was sitting in his backyard on a hammock reading the book, he looked at the trees and saw the leaves swaying back and forth. Based on that imagery, he used the colors of blue, white, and red that surrounded him and painted with broad strokes.
For the duration of Mr. Abreu’s showcase in the Von Auersperg Gallery, the Deerfield community has the opportunity to enjoy perusing his literary inspired works.