About the artist: Jose Maria Bustos, BFA, MFA, is a Rockefeller Fellow in Museum Studies and Education and a recipient of the U.S.A. National Endowment for the Arts Grant among other renowned grants. He has been represented by Hansen Fuller Gallery in San Francisco, Dart Gallery In Chicago and the Carolyn Ruff Gallery in Minneapolis. For the last 16 years Bustos has been quietly painting and living in Singapore, and selling his art to local and overseas clients. Bustos enjoyed a popular and burgeoning career prior to moving to Singapore in 1993. Truly unique in his own style, his experience stems from his early exposure to the arts in New York City. As he was raised only walking distance from the Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum and Guggenheim Museum these became his childhood playgrounds. In his teens, Bustos attended the now famous, “High School of Music and Art” in Manhattan majoring in fine art, and because of its association with New York’s Museum of Modern Art, spent many of his weekends doing research there as well. 

He later went on to study at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he received a BFA in Painting and Sculpture. At this stage in his career Bustos was personally asked by the renowned artist and then Dean of Princeton Universities Arts Department, Leon Golub to consider attending Princeton for his MFA. Bustos woven sculptures were of interest to Leon Golub and Bustos was introduced to other members of the Princeton faculty. However, Bustos decided to continue his studies at the San Francisco Art institute and in 1979 received an MFA in Performance and Conceptual Art. His conceptual studies were with artist likes Chris Burden, Tom Marioni, Vito Acconci, Maria Nordlin, Robert Irwin to name a few. His name later became closely associated with Karen Finley who also attended SFAI and London’s Kipper Kids.

During his undergraduate years Bustos studied painting with internationally renowned artist such as Clifford Stills, Christos, William Dekooning, Jennifer Bartlet, Tom Holland, William T. Wiley, Robert Hudson and Ron Davis to name a few. 

During his senior year of graduate school, Bustos was awarded the much coveted Rockefeller Fellowship Award in Museum Studies and education. As there is often limited fellowships awarded and thousands of applicants, it is considered a high honor. This fellowship allowed Bustos to serve as a junior curator at San Francisco’s De young Museum. During this period Bustos curated many exhibitions, interacted with many of the worlds major museums and artist, wrote educational materials, as well as serving on documentary teams i.e. travel to American Indian reservations in Kansas and Montana to record and document remaining living legends of American Indian culture for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Bustos also received a National Endowment Emerging Artist Grant in 1981 for his performance art work. Bustos has been featured on the cover of Performance Art Magazine on several occasions and has performed at such places as the School for the Chicago Art Institute and San Francisco’s Museum of Conceptual Art. 

Bustos extensive travel during the 60’s to the 70’s and beyond has always been to visit and live in the art centers of key European and South American Countries. Countries such as Columbia, Guatemala, Spain, Rome, Paris and Greece helped inspire Bustos present unique style of painting and provided inspiration for conceptual projects. He later settled in Israel for a year where he was exposed to the ancient arts of the Romans, Muslim and Hebrew cultures. 

Soon after, Bustos studied in Mexico at the world famous artist colony known as San Miguel de Allende. There he attended Las Beyas Artes one of Mexico’s most celebrated art schools and studied with the famous American painter Leonard Brooks as well as studying photography with Mexico’s and one of the worlds most famous photographers, Manual Alveres Bravo. Exposure to the muralist Orusco, Diego Rivera and the works of Frida Kaloh was inspirational and longstanding. Bustos by now is an all around artist with considerable accomplishments in Contemporary Art and Performance Art. He centers his art around his personal experiences and in creating the physical beauty of the human form through its inner strength and beauty. Bustos believes that man’s final judgment will be based in his inner accomplishments and not his external ones. Bustos depicts this abstract concept through his large-scale paintings by the creative use of color, texture, and line. His figurative works are built in multi-layer application using vibrant colors and interesting placement of his subjects, which are created in his mind. 

Jose Maria Bustos resides and paints in Singapore since 1993.