Dos Equis II

In this portrait of a torn and flattened Dos Equis beer carton, the painter and sculptor Robert Barber examines the relationship between two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects. As a sculptor, he builds objects from scavenged cardboard. As a painter, he is equally aware of structured layering and uses scrubby strokes that allow layers of color to show through from below.

A Minneapolis native, Barber earned his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota in 1952. A prolific painter and sculptor, it would be six decades before he received significant public recognition. Then, at the age of 93, in 2015, the Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art organized a major retrospective of his career. He soon had a series of gallery exhibitions in New York, and this drawing was selected by a jury of famous artists as a gift to Mia.