Emilio Lobato’s work in “Silent Elevations” is characterized by its dynamic yet quiet energy. Drawing from his personal archive, Lobato’s pieces reflect a steady, non-insistent movement that conveys a deep sense of rhythm and flow. His use of abstraction and collage allows him to distill his subjects to their essence, creating a powerful visual language that speaks to themes of isolation, tradition, and cultural identity.
Curate, LA
Randall Reid and Emilio Lobato: Silent Elevations
August, 10, 2024
“In the works of Emilio Lobato, born into a family with deep roots around Colorado’s southern border, pieces of the area’s centuries-old culture of weaving and pottery patterns ghost through his elegant modern abstract paintings.
Susan Froyd,Westword
Mo’Print: Emilio Lobato, Solo en Papel: 30 Anos de Grabados
February 29, 2024
Inspired by these unorthodox materials, Lobato creates wall plaques that brim with geometric whimsy, texture, subtle gradations of color, and depth. The overlapping half-circles, rectangles, and strips offer visual intrigue, for instance, when a thin orange strip forming a “V” is superimposed on roughly tacked layers of black squares and discs. Lobato gives the panels apropos titles such as Cancel Culture, Collectiva Dividida (A Collective Divided), and Distancia Social (Social Distancing) (all works 2021), to further reflect our times.
Deborah Ross, Southwest Contemporary
Emilio Lobato: Lessons Learned
February 25, 2022
…While it seems hard to connect the dots between his background and his powerful compositions, the inspiration becomes clearer when considering the symbolic energy of the area’s traditions of religious and indigenous arts.
Susan Froyd, Westword
Emilio Lobato, Lessons Learned
November 13, 2021
For the Havu Gallery’s twentieth anniversary, the solo Emilio Lobato: Retro-Spectacle: 25 Years of Painting & Prints shone a spotlight on the Denver artist’s signature geometric abstractions, their forms and colors reflecting his childhood in the San Luis Valley.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Emilio Lobato: Retro-Spectacle: 25 Years of Painting & Prints
William Havu Gallery
December 26, 2018
Despite the international look of Lobato’s pieces, they’re completely rooted in the history of Colorado and the state’s art. Those deep, rich palettes bring to mind Spanish Baroque art, or Native American and Hispanic weavings
Michael Paglia, Westword
William Havu Gallery Comes Full Circle With Emilio Lobato Show
October 10, 2018
Over the past twenty years, William Havu Gallery has presented over ten solos for Lobato, and included his work in numerous two-person and group exhibits. In 2011 The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center presented Lobato’s work in a solo show titled, Mi Linda Soledad. Not only is Emilio Lobato an important piece to the history of this gallery, but he’s made his mark on Colorado’s art landscape as well.
meer.com
October 2018: Emilio Lobato
October 16, 2018
The star attraction is Evolution: Emilio Lobato & Virgil Ortiz, which includes not only the individual efforts of Emilio Lobato and Virgil Ortiz, but also a half-dozen works on paper and a remarkable pair of ceramic sculptures that the two did collaboratively.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Emilio Lobato, Virgil Ortiz and Jeff Kahm Head South by Southwest at Havu
September 28, 2016
Emilio Lobato and Virgil Ortiz show side-by-side — and in collaborative works — in this season opener at William Havu Gallery, blending Lobato’s mixed media and monotypes and a new batch of Ortiz’s clay sculptures.
Susan Froyd, Westword
Emilio Lobato and Virgil Ortiz: Evolution
September 02, 2016
From any point of view, it is a major milestone for Lobato, one only enhanced by the accompanying 88-page catalog and the show’s subsequent tour to museums and art centers in Sedona, Ariz.; Ashland, Ore.; and Missoula, Mont.
While it is possible to question the emotional impact of his abstractions, which date in this show from 1993 to the present, it is impossible to deny his uncompromising technical virtuosity.
This prolific Latino artist’s work has the sweep and evolutionary narrative to sustain an exhibition of this scale, with identifiable periods that curator Tariana Navas-Nieves carefully denotes.
Kyle MacMillan, The Denver Post
Virtuosity Permeates Denver Artist Emilio Lobato’s Mid Career Retrospective
May 4, 2016
In these new monotypes, Lobato, a major Denver artist, has adopted the symbol of two feathers to represent the unity of male and female characteristics within his own personality.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Surface Tension and Other Special Effects at Havu
December 23, 2015
The main attraction at Havu right now is Emilio Lobato: The Measure of a Man, a major exhibit that comprises more than sixty works (most of them new) and covers the walls on both levels of the gallery. With the preponderance of bright tones in these pieces — as opposed to the dark shades that characterized much of Lobato's oeuvre of the past decade — you'd never guess that they are his attempt to deal with feelings of loss and inadequacy that came about when his wife died recently.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Now Showing: Emilio Lobato and Emmett Culligan
April 17, 2014
I'll be honest: I thought that every piece in this show was interesting and worthy of consideration, but some of them were so fabulous, they were showstoppers. Tops on this list is the poignantly titled yet quietly elegant "Human Trajectory: Cornerstone, Milestone, Headstone," a monumental — and monumentally dense — wall panel that obviously refers to his wife's (or anyone's) journey through life, but functions as a constructivist abstract when freed of the narrative aspects.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Emilio Lobato and Emmett Culligan get in shape at Havu
March 13, 2014
Then there are artists whose work is more removed, like the abstract-expressionist-related scenes by Sam Scott, the fractured imagery of Lui Ferreyra, Emilio Lobato's Latino stripes, and the smeary action paintings of the late Jeremy Hillhouse.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Emilio Lobato and Emmett Culligan get in shape at Havu
March 13, 2014
For the Denver-based abstractionist Emilio Lobato, Constructivism has long been a guiding force. His trio of dark, spare collages is built of sharp-edged geometric shapes affixed to panels with gold brads. The forms overlap and interlock, neatly in some places and loosely in others. What governs our reception of them isn’t the juxtaposition of shapes, it’s the appearance of recognizable objects: rulers. They not only organize the space, they literalize the concept of “measuring up,” interrogating pictures and viewers simultaneously. The question asked is how do we assess value, and its appearance in this context unnerves because it is unexpected.
David Roth, Square Cylinder
Emilio Lobato & Barbara Kronlins + 4 @ Andrea Schwartz
January 27, 2013
Do not miss Emilio Lobato, upstairs on the mezzanine, where the notable artist is presenting a selection of his recent neo-constructivist wall-relief sculptures made of found and ready-made materials. These pieces represent a coherent extension of Lobato's abstract paintings.
Michael Paglia, Westword
The Space In Between
May 12, 2012
The show begins with a handful of pieces from the 1980s, but really hits its stride with the pieces done in the '90s and later. Many of the paintings reflect Lobato's interest in straight lines and systematically organized forms, which he reconciles with his Hispanic-culture-based interest in rich color. The show reveals that Lobato has followed different paths over the years, but they've all led in the same direction.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Mi Linda Soledad
May 11, 2011
His latest creations, many of which are three-dimensional, are featured in Casi, Casi (Bit by Bit); in them, Lobato has reinterpreted his own early work. This move was almost inevitable after he prepared for his lifetime retrospective at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (see www.csfineartscenter.org), which caused him to re-look at many of the pieces he'd done over the last few decades. In truth, though, many seem to be unprecedented in his oeuvre. Lobato's always been good, but these latest works might be his best ever.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Casi, Casi (Bit by Bit)
April 6, 2011
Now there's a worthy heir to the mantle of greatness seen at the Chisman show: Mi Linda Soledad, which means "My Beautiful Solitude," the Emilio Lobato retrospective at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center.
To my mind, there are many connections between Lobato and Chisman, and they go beyond the fact that both Colorado natives worked in abstract painting in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and displayed their work principally in Denver and Santa Fe. To me, their most profound interconnection is in their training as artists, with both having studied at Colorado College — admittedly decades apart — with the late Mary Chenoweth. Her influence is easy to see in their shared use of collage and of geometrically conceived compositions that also feature expressionist elements.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Mi Linda Soledad
March 22, 2011
The main attraction at Havu is Emilio Lobato: De Veras, featuring an eye-dazzling display of paintings that rely on the horizontal line for their visual interest. Lobato's distinguished career dates back several decades; some of the amazing attributes associated with him are his fine technical skills, his boundless creativity and his staggeringly dedicated work ethic, which results in a mind-dizzying number of artworks. For this show alone, he did nearly fifty new pieces!
Michael Paglia, Westword
Colorado Artists Star in Shows at Gallery T and Havu
February 5, 2009
Three 2D/Three 3D. Unlike most of the other top galleries, where significant solos currently reign, Havu has taken the tried-and-true summer routine of presenting a group show. Three 2D/Three 3D features three painters and three sculptors. Clearly the lead painter is Emilio Lobato, who works in Denver. Lobato's fabulous geometric abstractions are showcased in the window space and on the mezzanine.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Three 2D/ Three 3D
July 19, 2007
The solos that open the season at William Havu Gallery combine the disparate work of two of the area's best-known and well-regarded artists. On the walls is Emilio Lobato: Desde Siempre (Since Forever), which comprises the artist's signature abstractions. The title refers to Lobato's self-exploration and to the fact that he can't remember not being an artist; he feels he's been creating art "since forever." The title is also meant to salute his great-grandfathers, both of whom were weavers, with Lobato laying in patterns of wavy lines across his geometric compositions, giving them an almost folk-art quality.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Emilio Lobato and Martha Daniels
October 5, 2006
On the second floor of the center, in the aptly named Upper Galleries, is Emilio Lobato: Candela: Slow Burn -- and it's a knockout, too. Like Parson, Lobato is one of the state's most important artists, a total workaholic who produces a tremendous amount of work every year. Also like Parson, he believes his thoroughly abstract style stems from living in the American West. Lobato was born in 1959 in the small town of San Pablo in the San Luis Valley; his agrarian family has lived in that part of the state for more than 200 years. He's frequently said that the isolation of his childhood has been a continuing source of artistic inspiration -- and although that's hard to find in the work itself, judging from the dozens of paintings in this show, he must spend many hours every day toiling alone in his downtown studio.
…Relying on his instinctual sense for composition, Lobato assembles ordinary shapes -- in addition to the aforementioned circles and lines, rectangles and bars -- into extraordinarily powerful formalist arrangements. The shapes are each a different color, though he uses the same palette for most of his paintings: a deep red, lots of black, and a browned-out off-white. One piece is done entirely in that antique-looking off-white color: "Candela (Slow Burn)," the exhibition's title piece, in collage on canvas. Technically, this painting is light in color, but with all those brown tones, and within the context of the rest of the show, it "reads" dark. An all-over abstraction, "Candela" is virtually constructivist, as is "DINDI," in which Lobato covered the surface with horizontal stripes and bars in red and green on an ecru field of book pages.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Separate Ways
November 4, 2004
With all of these installations nearly everywhere, it's wonderful to come upon a pair of modernist painters, Wilma Fiori (Payton's choice), and Fiori's pick, Emilio Lobato. Fiori is represented by elegant color-field pieces, Lobato by a pair of his signature constructivist compositions. The entire show could have been given over to the first-rate painters in Colorado who work with straight lines and big areas of color.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Risk Management
June 12, 2003
In the space under the loft, Havu has paired Heitler with Lobato, whose work was seen last month in an enormous solo show here. The Heitlers include some real standouts, such as the four small square monotypes with chine colle hanging on the front of the sliding racks. And a couple of the Lobatos, "Abánico (fan)" and "Tiempo Prestado (on borrowed time)" are gorgeous. They're wonderful constructivist compositions made from recycled book covers, a new and promising material that Lobato's been using lately. The tiny postage-stamp-sized monoprints are intriguingly intricate.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Happy Birthday Havu
November 14, 2002
In many ways, Lobato, who traces his heritage back to the early Spanish settlers of the San Luis Valley, is a quintessential Colorado artist. He received his formal art training at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, where he studied with the late Mary Chenoweth, a respected teacher and artist. Chenoweth's influence is still visible in Lobato's work, especially in the way he addresses the same ideas again and again, but each time with a clearly different approach.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Beauty Contest
October 3, 2002
Upstairs is a group of traditional black-and-white photos of buildings by Emilio Lobato. The photos were taken by Lobato when he visited Cuba a few years ago. Just like his mixed-media paintings, Lobato's photos show off his never-erring sense for a balanced composition.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Summertime Views
July 26, 2001
Lobato, who has maintained a studio in downtown Denver for a decade or so, is one of the region's most important abstract artists. His signature work combines collage and paint to produce pieces that sport gestural geometric compositions. While these elegant abstractions seem very non-objective, they are actually subjective, at least according to Lobato. They are narratives, loosely speaking, that illustrate the artist's own life story.
Michael Paglia, Westword
Meet Me In San Luis
April 5, 2001