Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

Canyon, TX

806-651-2244

http://www.panhandleplains.org/

 

Emilio Caballero: Artista y Maestro en El Llano

 

The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at Canyon, Texas, is exhibiting a retrospective of long-time Texas artist, Emilio Caballero.

"This exhibition is a tribute to an artist and teacher who dedicated his life to art making and art teaching in the Texas Panhandle," said curator of art Michael R. Grauer. "In my fourteen years in the area no one artist has been praised more for their hands-on impact on the arts in this area than Dr. Cab," Grauer added. "The accolades from his former students are legion," he emphasized.

"Emilio Caballero: Artista y Maestro en El Llano" will be on exhibit at the PPHM September 22, 2001 through February 17, 2002 in the Main Art Gallery.

 

Emilio Caballero: Artista y Maestro en El Llano

by Michael Grauer

 

Beginning September 15, 2001, the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at Canyon, Texas, will open a retrospective of long-time Texas artist, Emilio Caballero (b. 1917). "Emilio Caballero: Artista y Maestro en El Llano" will celebrate the artist's unique contributions to the cultural life of Texas and include works from private and public collections across the United States, in several media, including oil, watercolor, and copper enamel.

Born at Newark, New Jersey, to Spanish parents who immigrated to the United States via Cuba, Caballero came to the Texas Panhandle in 1937. He studied first at Amarillo Junior College, the West Texas State College. Caballero then served in the United States Army infantry in both Europe and the Pacific during World War II. Following the war, Caballero taught art in Amarillo public schools before receiving a master's degree from Columbia and beginning his tenure at West Texas State University in 1949. In 1955 he received his doctorate from Columbia and was appointed full professor and art department head at West Texas. One of the most versatile and acclaimed artists to work in the area, Dr. Caballero taught at West Texas State from 1949 to 1979. He delivered workshops and demonstrations and gave classes beyond his university duties all over the Southwest.

"The smell of paint and wet clay­these things were a way of life . To paint, to act, to write, to create were as natural as eating and playing.I truly believe the artist who captures new visions and reveals new horizons and new vistas will be the one to revere the great and everlasting truths of life," wrote Dr. Caballero in 1957.

Caballero exhibited in major including the Texas General, the Texas Fine Arts Association annual, Southwestern Exhibition of Prints and Drawings, and the American Watercolor Society annual, as well as local exhibitions. His first solo show was at Amarillo in 1946. Today, his works can be found in the College of the Southwest, Hobbs, New Mexico; Pampa-Lovett Memorial Library; and the Museum. His large-scale public works are also found at the Midland (Texas) Public Library; the Amarillo Municipal Building; and the Bank Southwest, Midland; and Amarillo Savings and Loan. Just recently, Caballero was commissioned by Texas Tech University to create a large scale, copper enamel mural for its new medical school building in Amarillo.

He is listed in Who's Who in Texas (1968); Outstanding Educators in America (1973); Who's Who in American Art (1974); and Who Was Who in American Art (1999).

 

About the author:

John Hazeltine, director of TFAO, toured west Texas art museums in April, 2013. While visiting the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum he met Michael R. Grauer, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs/ Curator of Art at the Museum. Mr. Grauer has written several texts published in Resource Library. They are listed in TFAO's Author Study and Index. (left: Michael R. Grauer, 2013. Photo by John Hazeltine)

The Museum's website said of Mr. Grauer as of 2013:

Michael Grauer directs PPHM's curatorial staff, is the museum's Curator of Art, and oversees the weapons, sports, and cowboy and ranching artifact collections. Born in Kansas City, Kansas, he received a bachelor's degree with a double major in art history and painting from the University of Kansas and a master's degree in Art History from Southern Methodist University. After college he worked at the Smithsonian American Museum of Art in Washington, D.C. Michael didn't always plan on an art career, though. Originally, he wanted to play professional football or be a cowboy. Instead he went to art school, "because I could draw horses better than anyone and I didn't know what else to do." If Michael could live anywhere else in the world, it would be Taos, New Mexico (for the art scene) or Saskatchewan (because the name "sounds cool").

 

The above article is reprinted with permission of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.

Read more in Resource Library Magazine about the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum.

This page was originally published in Resource Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for more information. rev. 6/7/11

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