Roberto Gil de Montes’s paintings explore themes of identity, mythology, and the intersection of personal and cultural narratives. His work often blends influences from his dual heritage, drawing from Mexican folklore, pre-Columbian imagery, and contemporary art practices. We were recently honored to treat The Receptor, a darkly mythical work from The Rennie Collection, which features a large, intricate artist-made frame. The Rennie Collection, a prominent private collection of contemporary art, actively participates in loan programs, sharing its works with institutions worldwide.
The Receptor prior to treatment.
Watch our team reframe The Receptor after treatment in the video below, and then scroll down to learn more about the artist and treatment process:
Born in 1950 in Guadalajara, Mexico, Gil de Montes moved to Los Angeles as a child and has spent much of his life between the U.S. and Mexico. After earning his BFA and MFA from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, his work began reflecting a hybrid of cultural influences. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was part of a dynamic group of Latinx artists addressing themes of bicultural identity and sexuality. His lush, tropical landscapes and enigmatic figures create dreamlike, narrative scenes that challenge conventional understandings of space, gender, and time.
In recent years, Gil de Montes has garnered renewed attention for his contributions to contemporary painting, with works like The Receptor standing as pivotal examples of his multifaceted vision. The painting was included in the 1989 exhibition Hispanic Art in the United States: 30 Contemporary Painters and Sculptors at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
The exhibition label on the reverse of the painting prior to treatment.
From the accompanying catalog:
Roberto Gil de Montes has executed a number of paintings based on the myths of Southern California: the movies and the automobile, in particular. Others draw on the artist's extensive knowledge of Mexico's artistic and cultural past—he is both painter and art-history instructor. The Receptor, one of his most ambitious works to date, evokes thematically and stylistically the hallucinatory writings of Antonin Artaud, part of whose Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara (1936–37) recreated his experience of an Indian peyote dance in the Mexican interior.
The Receptor is visible installed on the left of the image, as part of the traveling exhibition. (Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.)
Artaud, a French dramatist, poet, and actor, was known for his attempts to create a “theatre of cruelty,” a series of ritualistic performances aimed at revealing the raw truths of the human experience. His travels to Mexico, particularly his encounters with the Rarámuri (Tarahumara) people, and the hallucinatory effects of peyote, deeply influenced his work.
As Evan Moffit writes in Frieze Magazine:
If, as Susan Sontag once argued, madness is a mirror – reflecting the limits of what we consider culturally acceptable – then what did Antonin Artaud see when he lost his mind in the mountains of Mexico, in the autumn of 1936? The apocryphal tale, immortalized by the playwright’s travelogue A Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara (1937), has since been used to allegorize the chafing of creative genius against the fragile edges of reason.
In many ways, The Receptor embodies a similar tension, blending Gil de Montes’s personal mythology with the broader cultural and spiritual narratives that shape his art.
Upon arrival at The Conservation Center, The Receptor was carefully removed from its artist-made frame for a thorough examination. The painting was stretched onto an underbuilt strainer that had deformed over time with the upper and lower bars warping inward. The strainer was too snug within the frame, creating differential stresses across the canvas, strainer and frame. An inscription on the crossbar read: "#PO1636-B ROBERTO GILDE MONTES 'THE RECEPTOR' #PO1636-B," and labels were found on the upper corner braces.
The painting removed from the frame before treatment.
The canvas, a heavy-weight, plain-weave linen, was stretched too tightly over the strainer, with minimal turnover at the edges. The paint layer exhibited numerous sharp, open cracks, which appeared to be the result of the over-tensioning of the canvas. These cracks, combined with one area of impact damage, resulted in significant disruption of the painted surface. Additionally, the frame displayed some grain-line shrinkage, resulting in slight gaps in the miter joints. There were also abrasions and scuff marks scattered across the artist-painted frame.
Before treatment.
The reverse before treatment.
For treatment, the strainer was replaced with a new stretcher, alleviating much of the canvas tension and providing space for the piece to properly fit within its frame. Conservation adhesives were used to consolidate the cracks in the paint layer, stabilizing these fragile areas. The painting was then surface cleaned, removing grime and dust using both aqueous and dry cleaning methods. The reverse was gently cleaned with a soft brush and vacuum.
Inpainting was carried out in areas of loss and abrasion using reversible conservation paints, carefully matching the original tones and textures. The frame, also an important part of the artwork, underwent surface cleaning and consolidation, and losses were filled and inpainted with reversible paints to restore its integrity. Finally, the painting was reinstalled into its original frame, with original wooden blocks reused to secure the canvas. A new acid-free Coroplast backing board was added for protection, and the hanging hardware was inspected and replaced as needed.
After treatment.
The reverse after treatment.
The conservation of The Receptor highlights not only the intricate technical challenges inherent in preserving contemporary artworks but also underscores the lasting significance of Gil de Montes’s artistic vision. By stabilizing both the painting and its frame, we ensure that The Receptor can continue to be appreciated in its full, complex narrative form. As the work joins the Rennie Collection’s broader mission of sharing contemporary art with global audiences, its careful restoration allows it to speak anew, offering both a visual and conceptual portal into the deeply personal and culturally resonant world that Roberto Gil de Montes continues to build through his art.
Sources/Provenance:
Jan Baum Gallery, Los Angeles
Exhibited: Houston, Texas, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Hispanic Art in the United States: 30 Contemporary Painters and Sculptors, June 9 – September 4, 1989 (and traveling), pp. 61, 120 (illus.)
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antonin-Artaud
https://www.frieze.com/article/antonin-artauds-mirror-madness
