[Many thanks to artist Avery Johnson for bringing this item to our attention.] Maya Pontone (Hyperallergic, April 25, 2025) offers an obituary article honoring the life and work of the late Tony Bechara. She writes, “His more than 50-year career balanced a meticulous abstract practice and a passionate commitment to underrepresented artists.”
Tony Bechara, whose passionate support for artists helped mold New York City’s cultural landscape, died at his home on Wednesday, April 23, on his 83rd birthday. The news of his death was announced by Lisson Gallery, which presented a solo exhibition of his work last January.
A pioneering visual artist whose 50-year practice balanced exuberant spontaneity with measured precision, Bechara spent most of his life residing and working in New York. He was widely recognized for his fervent support of historically underrepresented artists, many of whom were his peers, like Carmen Herrera and Leon Polk Smith, and his advocacy for Latine arts and institutions such as El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1942, Bechara initially traveled to Washington, DC, to study law at Georgetown University, where he received his Bachelor’s degree. Uncertain about this career trajectory, Bechara subsequently traveled to Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne for a year while becoming immersed in the city’s arts and culture landscape. It was there that he developed a passion for painting.
Back in the United States in the early 1960s, Bechara enrolled at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, developing a painting technique defined by a system of controlled chaos. Through experimental automatic painting techniques and meticulous premeditated grid-making, he explored the never-ending possibilities of color.
In addition to his art practice, Bechara was an active member of New York’s Latine and Latin American arts community, serving on the board of several local arts organizations including the Studio in a School, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and El Museo del Barrio, where he was board chairman for 15 years. [. . .]
Throughout his lifetime, Bechara’s dynamic compositions were spotlighted in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Ten Puerto Rican Artists (1970) at the Brooklyn Museum, the 1975 Whitney Biennial, and The Shaped Field: Eccentric Formats (1981) at MoMA PS1. [. . .]
For full article and photos of his work, go to https://hyperallergic.com/1006500/puerto-rican-painter-and-nyc-arts-advocate-tony-bechara-dies-at-83/
[Shown above, photo by Maku López, courtesy Lisson Gallery: Tony Bechara painting in his studio in 2018.]
[Many thanks to artist Avery Johnson for bringing this item to our attention.] Maya Pontone (Hyperallergic, April 25, 2025) offers an obituary article honoring the life and work of the late Tony Bechara. She writes, “His more than 50-year career balanced a meticulous abstract practice and a passionate commitment to underrepresented artists.” Tony Bechara, whose
