Candida Alvarez (b. 1955, Brooklyn, New York, lives and works in Baroda, Michigan) is an artist and educator whose artistic career spans five decades. Her vibrant, multi-layered works are intricate arrangements of visual fragments from her life. She is fascinated by the interplay of color, texture, form, and the tactile and emotional qualities of paint. Regarded as one of her generation’s most innovative and experimental painters, Alvarez’s kaleidoscopic abstract and figurative works weave together personal and cultural memory, art historical references, wordplay, and everyday life. 

Alvarez was raised in Brooklyn by parents who migrated from Puerto Rico, and emerged as an artist in the late 1970s. While pursuing her bachelor of fine arts degree at Fordham University,  she was working as a curator at El Museo del Barrio. Her first exhibition was at the Museo in 1977, in a group show called Confrontación: Ambiente y Espacio. In the early 1980s, she worked in a studio as part of the International Studio and Workspace Program at PS1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1). She also participated in the foundational artist in residence program at the Studio Museum in Harlem. These experiences were critical to Alvarez’s development as an artist, connecting her with the wider network of artists, community, conversation and collaboration. After attending Yale for graduate school, Alvarez accepted a teaching position at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. In the artist’s words “New York was where I became an artist. Chicago is where I expanded my vision.”

Alvarez has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1981), Studio Museum in Harlem (1985), Pilchuck Glass School (1998), and LUMA Foundation (2023), among others. Recent awards include the Trellis Art Fund Award (2024), the Latinx Artist Fellowship Award (2022), and American Academy of Arts and Letters Award (2022). Her work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Denver Art Museum; Studio Museum Harlem, New York; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Seattle Art Museum; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; and the Addison Gallery of American Art, among others.

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