Artist-in-residence honors legacy of father, mentor, and landscapes of Argentina  

Your last chance to visit Marcos Acosta in his Open Studio residency during Aspen’s Art Week is here. For his residency, Acosta’s ethereal landscape paintings are hung in his studio and are sure to inspire and delight. Visitors have the opportunity to meet and engage directly with the artist and witness firsthand his vision and process. 

Complementing his residency at Aspen’s Rogue Arts District near Mill Street through Saturday, Aug. 2, his exhibition of his work, curated by Hexton Gallery, is currently on view at The Aspen Street Lodge, where his paintings are alongside those of Terri Loewenthal, Rodrigo Valenzuela, Evan Hecox, Richard Carter, Eric Fischl, and Rachel Garrard, among others.

Acosta focuses his landscapes almost exclusively on jagged mountains, clouds, and canyons, along with his signature vibrant, bold burst of color blasting through his paintings to lusciously bathe land in light, which is emblematic of his soaring painterly spirit — his meticulously sharp framing expressing the connection between humans and nature, making his works feel dazzlingly inspired.

He was born and raised in Córdoba, Argentina. His family, much like his earliest peers and his first mentor, was always ahead of him in age and experience.

“My siblings are much older than I am, and I was born when my parents were already quite advanced in age,” he said.

Growing up, trips to the Sierras de Córdoba were frequent, and it was in the mountains of Argentina that the painter had his first direct encounters with nature. These experiences would go on to shape his signature style of landscape painting in continuation of the legacy left for him.

“Córdoba has a special light. The sun there is warm and comforting, bathing the landscape in a glow that has captivated painters from the very beginning,” he said.

Though growing up in Córdoba instilled in him much in terms of his externally based naturalistic preoccupation, much of his journey harks back to his internal motivation as a child.

“My path in art began spontaneously, without any influence from anyone in my family. I believe it was a natural response to an inner drive that’s been with me since birth,” he said.

Acosta, 44, started painting and drawing around age 10 and had his first exhibition at 11. As a pre-teen, he recalled being the only child at a painting class amongst adults.

“I asked my father to take me to painting classes. He got in touch with the woman who would become my first painting teacher, and I started attending her workshop, where all my classmates were adults,” he said.

That supportive place nurtured Acosta’s journey and career.

“I was incredibly happy to be there, surrounded by people who wanted to do the same thing I did,” he went on.

After that first workshop, he would go on to join more throughout his school years, honing his devotion to painting and drawing. Since that first exhibition, he has had more than 35 solo exhibitions and over 130 group shows.

After nearly 10 years of intensively painting and drawing and following the passing of his father, he would go on to study art at the School of Arts at the National University of Córdoba with his mentor, Argentinian master and Córdoba-based artist Carlos Peitaeado.

Of that period, Acosta said, “It was a powerful experience of resilience,” adding that he recalled asking himself: “What would my father have wanted for me?” 

His love of painting endured, and this influential time in his life was indelible in its impact on him, both personally and professionally.

“It was where I had my first real sense of the art world and art as a profession — it shaped the path of everything that followed. Peiteado received me like a son, and through his teachings, I came to understand that the artist’s journey is a search for new territories within us, not outside of us,” he said.

Acosta, who recently relocated his family to Colorado, has the mountains of Aspen, like those of Argentina, to beckon him to continue searching for those territories. And where better to show his works than here?

“Aspen continues to surprise me — the mountains here are an endless source of inspiration, beyond anything I could have imagined, even in my wildest dreams,” he said, adding, “what I feel most deeply is gratitude.”

It is this deeply-rooted appreciation of nature that most inspires the painter, both capturing his imagination and awakening his inclination to question our participation in the world.

“We behave as though we are separate from nature, as if it exists outside of us, to be controlled or exploited,” he said.

His paintings derive, in part, from his desire to confront the solitude of feeling small within this worldly vastness to arrive at the realization that the entirety of the essence of the world and the presence of humanity live inside of him and all of us.

“We are just one small part of the whole,” he said.

Complementing his residency and exhibition here in Aspen, he is giving back by donating a painting from a series inspired by Utah’s Arches National Park to the national nonprofit Shining Stars Foundation. Earlier this week, he received a special delegation from the Biennial of the Americas to visit his Open Studio in Aspen, sharing his process and what moves him in his work.

How does he manage to accomplish all of this?

“I feel a constant urge to paint, and painting is like breathing, eating, walking — painting means everything,” he said.

That is where Acosta is now: busy in the studio, open to nature, and appreciative of his family and friends, adding of Bob Chase, co-founder of The Aspen Art Fair and Aspen’s Hexton Gallery along with Becca Hoffman, fair director and founder of the arts organization 74th arts.

“I’m deeply happy to be part of this story with Hexton Gallery and with my dear friends Agustina Mistretta and Bob Chase,” he said.