Candida Alvarez was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1955. She is an American painter and a tenured professor of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1998. Alvarez is known for her complex, vibrantly layered combinations of abstract and figurative forms rich in pop, historical and modern art references, incorporating world news and personal memories.

Candida Alvarez: Here is the artist’s first major institutional exhibition, taking place at the Chicago Cultural Center and reflecting forty years of her painting. Embracing and further contextualizing her work, Candida Alvarez: Here: A Visual Reader features full-color reproductions of individual artworks and views of the exhibition as well as images from her Fall/Winter 2017 menswear collaboration with Rei Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons. Edited by Fulla Abdul-Jabbar and Caroline Picard. Featuring contributions from Elizabeth Alexander, Dawoud Bey, Coco Fusco, Kellie Jones, Elizabeth Murray, Terry R. Myers, Daniel R. Quiles, Kay Rosen, Daniel Schulman, Lowery Stokes Sims, and Rebecca Walker. Introduction by editors Fulla Abdul-Jabbar and Caroline Picard; book design by Sonnenzimmer.