Eric Alugas

Eric Alugas was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He studied painting at the University of New Orleans, and was awarded a scholarship to l’Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux Arts, in Montpellier and Paris, France. Alugas lived in Paris for many years, exhibiting there and throughout Europe, before returning to the United States. He now lives in New York, and exhibits there, as well as in Europe, and throughout the United States.

Alugas works through ideas from Myths and Folklore, the Arts and Philosophy, and the concrete elements of Painting— the canvas, gesso, paint, the brushstroke, splashes of paint. He probes those elements: their material use, and the history of their use, i.e. ideas associated with, and permeating them.

Each painting, or series of paintings, is an essay, or meditation, which explores both its subject matter and the very nature of the painting materials: each calls for, shatters, pushes and pulls against the other. They are strands woven to form a tapestry of meaning. The result is a painting, a concept - to be read.

Eric's paintings are Historical Painting in the profoundest sense: dealing with the encounter of the history of the painting materials, and the Idea, in the history of painting. The works are executed in oil paint, some with mixed media, on heavy freehanging canvas, suspended by metal grommets. In Alugas’s work the canvas is as prevalent and integral as the gesso, the gesso as the paint, and the paint as the wall.

Alguas is the recipient of grants from: the Ecole National Superieur des Beaux-Arts, in Paris and in Montpellier, France; the studio of Manuel Menan, in Madrid and Jean-Pierre Nicolini, in Uzes, France; Atelier 17 in Paris with Stanley William Hayter; the Paris American Academy, and the Foundation Taylor.

Alugas has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe. His works are in various private and public collections, notably the City Hall of Paris, and the Schomburg Center in New York. Alugas’s work was singled out and selected by the City of Paris for a national touring exhibition in France, and his work was also included in a touring exhibition in Germany.