SAMA Announces Acquisition of Carlos Rosales-Silva’s painting, "Biblioteca no. 3," inspired by San Antonio’s Central Library

San Antonio, TX – April 11, 2024 – The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) has acquired a painting by New York-based artist Carlos Rosales-Silva. Biblioteca no. 3. is part of a series inspired by San Antonio’s Central Library that the artist began during his 2017 residency at Artpace San Antonio. The six-story structure was designed by renowned Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta.

"We are honored to add Biblioteca no. 3 to the museum’s collection,” said Lana Meador, Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art. “Carlos’s painting—in addition to being visually striking—engages with broad cultural narratives while resonating with our local experience of the urban landscape in San Antonio.” 

The series reflects Rosales-Silva’s deep interest in Mexican Modernism and Postmodernism, including the study of Legorreta’s architecture, which is characterized by bright colors, geometric forms, and the interplay of light and shadow. Rosales-Silva’s interpretation of the library building merges organic and architectonic forms. Biblioteca no. 3 features a richly textured surface that the artist achieves by blending sand and crushed stone into his pigments. This quality further connects his work with architecture and building materials, including muralism and the vernacular tradition of stucco, which Rosales-Silva encountered often growing up in El Paso. Additionally, his textured canvases are in dialogue with the material quality of Mexican Modernist Rufino Tamayo’s paintings, who also added sand to his paints and etched into the surface of his works. The painting also demonstrates Rosales-Silva's dynamic exploration of color theory and the history of Modernist abstraction.

Rosales-Silva completed a major commission at SAMA in August 2023. His large-scale, site-specific mural Pase Usted inaugurated the Museum’s Gateway project series and is on view in SAMA’s Great Hall through September 14, 2025.

About Carlos Rosales-Silva

Carlos Rosales-Silva (born 1982, El Paso, TX; based in New York, NY) draws on his experience growing up on the US-Mexico border to create boldly hued and often highly textured abstractions. His paintings, installations, and murals explore the vernacular culture of the American Southwest, the Western canon of art history, and the political and cultural intersections between them. Through abstraction, Rosales-Silva evokes the landscape, labor, and colors he grew up with. He adeptly blends forms found in nature and the built environment, finding inspiration in places such as the painted storefronts of Latinx neighborhoods, interiors of Mexican American homes, and Indigenous pottery.

Rosales-Silva holds a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin and received an MFA from New York City’s School of Visual Arts in 2020.  Rosales-Silva has exhibited throughout the US and in Mexico City and has been an artist-in-residence at Abrons Art Center, New York, NY; Residency Unlimited, New York, NY; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; and Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY. Recent exhibitions include solo presentations at Sargent’s Daughters 2023 Armory Show booth, Sargent’s Daughters, Los Angeles, and Ruiz-Healy Art, New York, as well as group shows at The Latinx Project at New York University and the New York galleries of Beverly's and White Columns. In 2022, the artist completed a site-specific mural titled Pajarito, which spans the 15^th floor elevator lobby of New York City’s Empire State Building. Rosales-Silva is represented by Ruiz-Healy Art and Sargent’s Daughters.

Image credit: Carlos Rosales-Silva, American, born 1982, Biblioteca no. 3, 2022, Sand and crushed stone in acrylic paint on panel, 40 × 34 in. (101.6 × 86.4 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with The Brown Foundation Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund, 2024.4. © Carlos Rosales-Silva, Image courtesy of Ruiz-Healy Art.