By Joan Quarm
February 4, 1981
reprinted from El Paso Herald Post
But I would have a Manuel Acosta painting or two on my walls.
Actually, it isn't even necessary to be rich to obtain a treasure from the current exhibition at the artist's studio. Prices range from a mere $70 for a charcoal sketch to the several thousand dollars Acosta's latest oils can command.
Anyone with a few hundred dollars to spare after taxes can carry home something beautiful from 366 Buena Vista St. this week, happy in the knowledge that art purchases are tax-deductible.
Some of the work is not to be had for love or money. Marked NFS (Not For Sale) in the listing, it is being saved for exhibition at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., later this year. Acosta, nationally known for many years, has been invited to exhibit at the Hispanic show in the nation's capitol in September. He is reserving his most recent work and some of his earlier favorites for that occasion. Not all of them will come back to El Paso, for Washington has avid art collectors with educated eyes for beauty.
Looking around during Sunday's opening party made sense of the artist's statement that this exhibition is for himself as much as the rest of us, intended not to sell, although that is always good, but to get everything out on the walls where he can see it at one time.
"I am at a time of change," he said. "There must be new directions."
One of these is sculpture. Several wax figures were on display, ready for casting in metal. They are interesting, devoid of over-decoration, spare in line, and, with the exceptions of a serene Madonna, expressive of suffering.
One represents man's flight into space. "Flight is not easy," explained the artist. "Life is not easy."
For artists it never can be, but they bring joy and ease to others as well as, in the case of this one, all-embracing hospitality.
A log fire was burning in the grate at the studio. A good pianist played gentle Mexican music. Friends brought in trays of wonderful Mexican food. An opening became a party.
On the walls the painting compelled attention. Some were already starred "Sold," but there was a little black bull by moonlight, very inexpensive, and white horses in summer fields, garlands of bright flowers hung on dark wooden fences, studies of good human faces, some familiar, other unknown.
There were, among the most recent, paintings of bullfighters' gorgeous embroidered tunics, thrown empty on couch or chair, and a painting any cattlemen would love - crumpled leather boots standing empty below a horned skull.
Whatever Acosta paints is painted well and with affection. His show continues from 2 to 7 p.m. daily this week and is free and open to all.