Tony Bechara’s richly-hued abstract paintings employ the grid as the foundational element for his exploration of color principles, with a particular focus on the interplay between organization and randomness. Using strips of masking tape, he painstakingly lays out multicolor fields and their overall rhythm is determined by a process that is systematic but designed to encourage combinations of color to emerge by chance. The division of the surface of the painting into small modular boxes is similar to the effect of pixels; the gaze is constantly in motion. Bechara presents the viewer with their retinal and neurological relationship to color, balancing one’s immediate impression of hue and the overarching logic of pattern.
Tony Bechara was born in Puerto Rico in 1942 and lives and works in New York City. He attended Georgetown Law School and New York University, and later studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and the New York School of Visual Art. In the 1970s and 80s, Bechara was included in exhibitions organized by the Boulder, Colorado based Criss-Cross pattern printing collective and featured work in the group exhibition ‘Islamic Allusions’ at the Alternative Museum in New York. In 1980 he received a fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. Bechara has had solo exhibitions at El Museo del Barrio, New York in 1988; Alternative Museum in 1988; Artists Space in New York in 1993 and el Museo del Arte Puerto Rico in 2008. Recently, Bechara has participated in exhibitions ‘With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art, 1972-1985; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, (2019), which travelled to the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, (2021); ‘Point of Departure: Abstraction 1958-Present’, Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE (2021); and ‘Artists Choose Parrish”, Parrish Art Museum, NY, (2023). His work can be found in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; El Museo del Barrio, NY; Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and the Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska, NE.
Beyond his artistic career, Tony Bechara has a strong commitment to community service, serving as an active board member for several organizations. Currently, he is the Chairman Emeritus on the board of El Museo del Barrio, and he also serves on the boards of Studio in a School and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
As Chairman of the Board at El Museo del Barrio, Tony Bechara has played a pivotal leadership role in the institution’s transformation into a nationally and internationally recognized LatinX and Latin American museum.