ERIK D’AZEVEDO

Erik d’Azevedo is an artist and poet who has been active in the Bay Area art scene since the 1970s. D’Azevedo was born in Oakland, California in 1948 but lived in the eastern part of the state, Western Nevada, and the interior of Liberia as a child while his father conducted anthropological field work with Native American tribes of the Great Basin and the Gola and Kpelle peoples of West Africa. The experience of living among indigenous communities in the U.S. and West Africa shaped D’Azevedo’s world view and contributed to his initial understanding of art and visual culture.

D’Azevedo’s academic training in art began at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he studied with acclaimed minimalist sculptor John McCracken. Recognizing his talent in painting, McCracken encouraged D’Azevedo to return to the Bay Area to launch his career as an artist. Resettling in Oakland, he enrolled in the California College of the Arts, from which he received a BFA in 1974 and an MFA in 1976. At the California College of the Arts, he studied with seminal artists Franklin Williams, Judith Linhares, Roy De Forest, and Jay DeFeo. He later trained with DeFeo in her studio, and was heavily influenced by her concept of resisting the “hierarchy of material” in art. As a result, he has often sought experimental approaches, particularly through “process painting,” which aims to break with Western conventions by emphasizing automatism.

D’Azevedo has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the Southwest, notably at the Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Walnut Creek Civic Arts Center, and the University of Nevada, Reno. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1992 and was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2000. His works are housed in private and public collections, including the Oakland Museum of California and the University of Nevada, Reno.