Adrian Villeta Poetic Vision To Be Featured in Palm Beach

PALM BEACH, Fla. - Nov. 27, 2017 - PRLog -- Palm Beach interior designers Joseph Paul Davis and Jennifer Garrigues along with Puerto Rican entertainer Nydia Caro have announced a collaborative fundraiser for a book launch and photography exhibit featuring the works by Adrian Villeta on Monday, December 4 at 230 South County Road in Palm Beach. Proceeds for the event will benefit The Boys & Girls Club of Puerto Rico.

A third generation Puerto Rican from San Juan, Adrian Villeta's work creates a romantic vision capturing the grace and elegance of a bygone era whilst celebrating modern virtues of strength and independence. His depthful images are inspired by his own dreams and travels.

In 2014, Villeta had a solo exhibition curated by style icon Gloria Vanderbilt at the Huntsville Alabama Museum of Art. The artist has been featured numerous times at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico in San Juan and at Art Basel Miami. Adrian Villeta Poetic Vision marks the thirty-fifth year of his signature romantic portraits, still life's, landscapes and architecture.

Villeta received his first camera at age 12, and when a high school art teacher suggested that he concentrate on photography rather than painting, the die was cast for his future. "I didn't want to be a great fashion photographer," he says. "I wanted to be a great portrait artist." Still, Villeta never abandoned his love of painting and art school helped him blend the techniques of a portrait master like John Singer Sargent—his expertise in photography and his eye for fashion—to capture unique and timeless images.

Each portrait is carefully planned, staged and lit. Typical settings include old homes filled with antiquities, the formal French gardens at Villeta's San Juan home sculpted by gardener Marie Gloria Rivera, and even cemeteries, which he prizes for their ample religious icons.

Recalling the days before color photography, when 19th-century artists would tint images to help bring them to life, Villeta uses a medium-format camera to produce 30' by 50' black-and-white portraits. The images are printed on absorbent fiber paper and meticulously painted by hand—a process that can take weeks or months, depending on the amount of detail in the image. "Painting adds life to the photo, but does not take away from the image," he explains.