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Nicholas Gilman was born and raised
in New York City to parents who took an active role in the cultural
life of Greenwich village in its golden age, and who traveled
extensively in Europe and Mexico. His mother was the late Esther
Gilman whose work as a painter and illustrator was greatly
influenced by the Mexican modernists, and his father, writer Richard
Gilman, was theatre critic for Newsweek, The New Republic, The
Nation, as well as professor at the Yale drama school for over
30 years. Traveling to Mexico City in 1978 to study the mural
movement for a college research project, Nicholas became interested
in the traditions of Mexican painting. Working as an assistant
to the curator of prints at the Hispanic Society of America from
1982-84 brought him in close contact with Spanish painting and
sculpture, and led to an extended visit to Spain, where he absorbed
the gothic darkness of El Greco, Zurbarán and Goya. In
1986, he won a scholarship to The New York Academy of Art, a school
founded by Andy Warhol and others to promote the study of classical
painting and sculpture. After graduating, he established himself
as a painter of decorative folding screens and murals, working
out of his Tribeca studio. Having bought a house in San Miguel
de Allende, in central Mexico, he decided, in 1996, to move there
full time, and leave the world of commercial art to return exclusively
to easel painting. He became a Mexican citizen in 2005 and now
lives and works in Mexico City.
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