Joan Belmar is an American artist (born 1970). He is a painter who uses a three dimensional technique using painting and collage processes with both painted and untreated Mylar/paper strips in circles and curvilinear shapes variations which then produced different and changes degrees of transparency, as light and the viewer move in relation to the work. He was a Washington, DC Mayor's Art Award Finalist in 2007 as an outstanding emerging artist. The DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities has also awarded him with an Artist Fellowship Program grant in 2009, and in 2011 he was awarded an Individual Artist Grant by the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, MD. He is a two-time recipient of the Maryland Arts Council Individual Artist Grant in Visual Arts: Painting, in 2010and 2013.
Belmar was born in Santiago, Chile, in December, 1970. He studied art at the Fundacion DUOC in Santiago, where he graduated with a degree in Graphic Design/Technical Drawing in 1993. A year later he left Chile and moved to Spain. In Spain he changed his birth name (John) to the Catalan version (Joan). Belmar then moved to the United States in 1999, settling in Washington, D.C.
In 2003, Belmar was granted permanent residency in the U.S. based on extraordinary artistic merit, and then became an American citizen in 2010.
Belmar's artwork is part of private and public collections, including the University of Maine Museum of Art's permanent collection and the official collection of Washington, DC. More recently, in 2016 he was awarded the First Place prize, from among 2240 received artworks, for Best Original Work in the Osten Biennial of Drawing in Macedonia.
Belmar has written about his recent work: "In my ongoing series of 3D works, paintings and drawings, I have become intrigued by maps, especially as I researched exterminated ethnic groups. In the maps, I encountered symbols, colors, drawings, grids, dots, and lines. Using these, I explore the psychological and cultural divisions that affect the different ways we see the world. The different qualities of the elements---the sometimes clash and contradictions of the materials---create a dialogue."
In 2018 Belmar moved to New York, where he currently resides. He is represented by Adah Rose Gallery and Addison Ripley Fine Art in the Washington, DC area.
2019
University of Maine Museum of Art. Joan Belmar: "Way Stations". Bangor, ME
2018
Beguiled by Caravaggio, Adah Rose Gallery, Chevy Chase, MD
2018
Tangling Shadows, Rachel M. Schlesinger Concert Hall and Arts Center at Northern Virginia Community College’s Alexandria Campus, Virginia
2017
Cambalache. The Washington Post, Addison Ripley Fine Art, Washington, DC
2017
Émigré Artists, Charles Krause Reporting Fine Arts, Washington, DC
2017
Joan Belmar, Skopje, Macedonia
2014
CHORDS, Addison Ripley Fine Art, Washington, DC
2013
Trance-Lucid, Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC
2012
Hidden Treasure, Charles Krause Reporting Fine Arts, Washington, DC
Time, Change, and Movement: The Art of Joan Belmar, Capital One, McLean, VA
2011
ONCE, Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC
2008
Life’s Many Layers, H&F Fine Art, Mt. Rainier, MD
2007
Color Transparencies, Nevin Kelly Gallery, Washington, DC
2002
Illegal Alien, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
2001
Life, Sae Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
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