Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 to 6 and by appointment

Howard Scott Gallery is pleased to announce the opening - on Thursday, 2 November 2006 - of an exhibition of recent paintings by the Mexico City-based artist, Francisco Castro Lenero.

Mr Castro Lenero has chosen the title, Rembrandt Suite for the group of works which will compose the forthcoming exhibition, his third one-person show with the gallery, as he has been studying and exploring aspects of the great master's palette during an extended period of time.

One of the principal strengths of Castro Lenero's work has long been the vibrancy and beauty of the role of color, which he weds to the geometric organization of his works.

The depth and subtlety of tonalities in these works which pay homage to Rembrandt

continue to reveal his sensitivity to color, though the interweaving of deep reds, oranges, mustard yellows, and earth colors, in interaction with blacks and altered whites, constitute a marked departure from the sunlight-filled palettes which bespeak his Central American environment and heritage.

The painter's previous solo show at Howard Scott Gallery (Oct/Nov 2003) was titled Displacements (Desplazamientos) in acknowledgement of his beginning individual compositions with a classical grid structure and then "inserting" narrow bars of color to shift individual modular elements out of alignment, effecting a syncopated field of shifting lines and planes. He continues his exploration of these altered grids, with their possible allusion to musical structure (including jazz), in all but one of the works which will compose the new exhibition. Three of these works - sharing the poetic title, Motion registered - are like linear drawings on a monochromatic field, but employ the

materials and the scale of painting (each measures 59 x 47 in.).

Long esteemed as one of the most gifted painters of his generation in his native Mexico, Francisco Castro Lenero continues to exhibit widely, including his participation in the 2005 exhibition at the Reina Sofia in Madrid, Eco: arte contemporaneo mexicano,

co-organized by the critic and curator, Osvaldo Sanchez. His work is held in numerous museum collections, including - in this country - The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Museum of Modern Art (a recent promised gift), and San Antonio Museum of Art.