Vincent Valdez

Vincent Valdez (born 1977) is an American artist born in San Antonio, Texas, who focuses on painting, drawing, and printmaking. His artwork is representational and he frequently utilizes the genre of portraiture. Valdez often emphasizes themes of social justice, memory, and ignored or under-examined historical narratives. Valdez completed his B.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2000. He lives and works in Houston, Texas, and he has often spent considerable time in Los Angeles. Valdez is represented by the David Shelton Gallery (Houston) and Matthew Brown Gallery (Los Angeles). His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Ford Foundation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The National Portrait Gallery (United States), Blanton Museum of Art, Parsons School of Design, Clark Art Institute, and the Fundacion Osde Buenos Aires. In 2024-25, he had a mid-career survey exhibition titled "Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream..." at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, and MASSMoCA in North Adams.

Valdez was born in the South Side of San Antonio, Texas, in 1977. Valdez's interests in art emerged at an early age. He regarded himself as an outsider, and his work has been preserved since he was three. At age nine, he took up mural painting under the mentorship of Alex Rubio, another young San Antonio artist. Under Rubio's direction, Valdez worked on a series of murals; the first was located at the former site of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio. Later, Rubio and Valdez worked side-by-side to complete murals under the auspices of the Community Cultural Arts program.

After graduating from Burbank High School, Valdez enrolled in art school in Florida, but shortly thereafter transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) on a full scholarship. He completed his B.F.A. there in 2000. He had his first solo exhibition at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center's Theater Gallery in San Antonio in his last year at RISD. During Valdez's junior year at RISD, an elderly self-surrogate in his painting Remembering (1999) reflects his experience of "missing home," which contributed to his developing Chicano consciousness. His senior project at RISD culminated in his iconic piece Kill the Pachuco Bastard! (2000), which was influenced by the beginning of the film American Me (1992, dir. Edward James Olmos). The painting depicts the 1943 Zoot Suit riots, when sailors, servicemen, and other authorities in Los Angeles attacked Mexican Americans and tore off their Zoot Suits.Acquired by entertainer and arts collector and advocate Cheech Marin, the piece was exhibited as part of Cheech's Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge, which traveled to twelve venues from 2001 to 2007, including San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA), the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, the Indiana State Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, and the De Young Museum in San Francisco. In a review of the SAMA exhibition, it was deemed "the show's edgiest work," one in which "rapacious sailors... violate every Chicano body and cultural emblem with unremitting barbarity. The painting is remarkable for: the dynamic expressiveness and superb characterizations of its varied protagonists, the lurid lighting effects, the complex space (including a tile floor that 'rolls' like waves on an ocean) and the undeniable mastery that makes it possible to pack such dense (and meaningful) iconographic details into a compelling, clearly legible narrative." The painting was showcased in "Cheech Collects," the inaugural permanent collection exhibition of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry in Riverside, Ca, where a reviewer called it an exhibition highlight.

His three versions of I Lost Her to El Diablo (2001-2004) reflect an interest in Texas folklore (in the form of the "Devil at the Dance" tale), as well as deepening treatments of psychology and atmosphere in the culminating painting. Valdez continues the "Devil at the Dance" theme in a Day of the Dead context in A Dance with Death (2000), in which "the cold beauty" of the female protagonist is influenced by John Singer Sargent's Madame X, and El Diablo at the Dance (c. 2002) described as "an early masterpiece" by the artist."

Valdez held residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2005), The Vermont Studio Center (2011), the Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Residency/Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (2014), and The Joan Mitchell Foundation Artist in Residency (2018). He is a 2015 recipient of The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors. In 2015, he earned The Texas Commission on the Arts State Artist Award. Artadia named Valdez and his collaborator Adriana Corral as the 2019 Houston Award Winners. Valdez was a 2020 Studio Fellow at NXTHVN, an organization in New Haven, CT founded by Titus Kaphar, Jason Price, and Jonathan Brand, NXTHVN fellowships are designed to foster "intergenerational mentorship, cross-sector collaboration, and local engagement [to] accelerate the careers of the next generation and foster retention of professional art talent." During his fellowship, Valdez exhibited his work in the group show NXTHVN: Un/Common Proximity at James Cohan Gallery in New York, NY with Allana Clarke, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter, Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Jeffrey Meris, Esteban Ramón Pérez, and Ilana Savdie. Un/Common Proximity was curated by 2020-2021 NXTHVN Curatorial Fellow, Claire Kim.

In 2022, Valdez was a finalist and one of seven prizewinners for the Sixth Triennial Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition; he received one of four commendations. He was a 2022 recipient of the Mellon and Ford Foundation's Latinx Artist Fellowship. He received the Arion Press’ initial King Residency in 2023, and in 2025, he became one of the ACLU of Texas' 2025-2026 Artists-in-Residence. Pablo José Ramírez judged "Just a Dream" as the #2 exhibition of 2025 in Artforum. The Alamo Colleges District selected Valdez to be its inaugural Artist-in-Residence for 2025–2026.

Valdez has shown his work in a number of solo exhibitions throughout the United States, including venues Mass MoCA, The University of Texas Austin's Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Houston's Blaffer Art Museum, Artpace in San Antonio, The David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Washington and Lee University's Staniar Gallery, The McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, The Mesa Contemporary Arts Center, The Snite Museum of Art at Notre Dame University, the University of Texas A&M, Laredo, the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePaul University, and the Dallas Contemporary.

Valdez has shown his work in a number of group exhibitions at venues including The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, California, The Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, Minnesota, The Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, North Carolina Museum of Art, The Albuquerque Museum of Art, The National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago, The Frye Art Museum, Seattle, and the Parsons School of Design, Paris, France.