Gustavo Ojeda papers and website
Online Access
Available digital items: https://digital.archives.newschool.edu/index.php/Detail/collections/KA016401
Abstract
Gustavo Ojeda (1958-1989) was a Cuban-born, New York City-based artist known for his paintings of nighttime cityscapes. The collection includes Ojeda's sketches, exhibition records and catalogs, Parsons School of Design student papers, personal papers, including diaries, and an artist's website created by his nephew, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué.
Dates
- 1972-2023
Creator
- Ojeda, Gustavo, 1958-1989 (Artist, Person)
- Ojeda-Sague, Gabriel (Compiler, Person)
Extent
11.033 Cubic Feet (9 boxes and 6 oversized folders)
5.00 Gigabytes (2,018 digital files (4.66 gb), 1 archived website (.034 gb))
Language of Materials
English
Spanish; Castilian
Scope and Contents
The Gustavo Ojeda papers includes the artist's sketches, exhibition records and catalogs, Parsons School of Design student papers and work, personal papers, including diaries, and an artist's website created by Gustavo Ojeda's nephew, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué. Roughly three-quarters of the collection consists of the artist's sketchbooks, created between 1979 and 1987.
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research use. Please contact archivist@newschool.edu for appointment.
Conditions Governing Use
To publish images of material from this collection, permission must be obtained in writing from the New School Archives and Special Collections. Please contact: archivist@newschool.edu.
Biographical note
Gustavo Ojeda (1958-1989) was born in Havana, Cuba. After living in exile in Spain with his family from 1967 and then in Virginia, in the United States, Ojeda moved to New York to enroll at Parsons School of Design at the age of seventeen. William Clutz and Kestutis Zapkus were two of his teachers at Parsons.
After graduating with a BFA in 1979, Ojeda spent some time again in Spain with a fellowship from the CINTAS Foundation. It was during his time in Madrid that he started experimenting with nightscapes of cities, the paintings he became most known for. Upon returning to New York City, Ojeda exhibited his new works from Spain and garnered attention, especially in the Downtown scene.
Ojeda received a studio fellowship at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (as of 2024, MoMA PS1) for two consecutive years, which culminated in a one-man show in the museum. In 1984, at the age of 25, Ojeda was included in an exhibition of contemporary art, "An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture” at the Museum of Modern Art. He participated in group shows and solo shows mainly in New York, but also in Chicago, Los Angeles and Berlin, Germany. (An extended list of his exhibitions and a selection of his paintings can be found on the memorial website www.gustavoojeda.com.)
Ojeda was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986 and died from AIDS-related complications in New York in 1989. Although he was mainly known for his paintings, Ojeda drew hundreds of sketch portraits of New York City dwellers that were never exhibited. A selection of these sketches were published in the book, An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979–1989, edited by his nephew Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué.
References
"About" Gustavoojeda.com. Accessed August 15, 2024. https://www.gustavoojeda.com/about.
Gustavo Ojeda: Nightscapes, a Memorial Exhibition. Exhibition Catalog. Published by David Beitzel Gallery, New York, and the Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, 1990.
Ojeda-Sagué, Gabriel and Erich Kessel Jr., eds. An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979-1989. Chicago: Soberscove Press (2020).
Arrangement
Arranged in 6 series: 1. Documentation of artwork and exhibitions; 2. Exhibition catalogs; 3. Parsons School of Design; 4. Personal; 5. Posthumous; 6. Sketchbooks and other artwork. All are arranged alphabetically, except for Exhibition catalogs, which are arranged chronologically.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Donated to The New School Archives in two parts by Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, nephew of Gustavo Ojeda, both in 2023. Analog documents and digital image files were donated first, followed by the donation of the Gustavo Ojeda website.
Processing Information
Archivists retained original folder titles where present; titles supplied by archivists are noted as "devised title" in folder-level scope and content notes.
- Art -- Exhibitions (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Art -- Study and teaching (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Artists -- New York (State) -- New York (Subject) (Places) Subject Source: Local sources
- Cuban American artists (Subject) Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings
- Diaries (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Exhibition catalogs (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Magazines (periodicals) (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Sketches (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Slides (photographs) (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Student projects (Type of Material) Subject Source: Art & Architecture Thesaurus
- Title
- Guide to the Gustavo Ojeda papers and website
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- New School Archives and Special Collections Staff
- Date
- October 30, 2024
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin