Patrick McGrath Muñíz

Patrick McGrath Muñiz
Born1975 (age 50–51)
New York City, U.S.
EducationEscuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico, San Juan (BFA, 2003);
Savannah College of Art and Design (MFA, 2006)
Known forRetablo paintings; satirical figurative work; Spanish colonial iconography
MovementPostcolonial art; Figurative art
PartnerBlanca McGrath

Patrick McGrath Muñíz (born 1975 in New York City) is a Puerto Rican-Irish American painter, illustrator, and author. He moved to Puerto Rico with his family as a child. He lives and works in Houston, Texas. His paintings combine the visual traditions of Renaissance and Baroque art with imagery drawn from contemporary consumer culture, creating satirical works that examine colonialism, corporate capitalism, and cultural memory. He works primarily in oil on canvas and in the retablo format — small devotional altarpiece paintings rooted in Spanish colonial religious tradition.

His work is held in the permanent collections of institutions including the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, and the Reading Public Museum. In 2022, US Games Systems published his illustrated tarot deck, Tarot Neocolonial de las Americas.

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • Revelaciones, Rockhurst University, Kansas City, Missouri
  • Arcanas, Taller Puertoriqueño, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • Recolecciones / Recollections, Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania (May–August 2025)
  • Iconsumer, Museo de las Américas, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2007)
  • Mitos y Memorias, Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (October–November 2025)
  • Francis & Co., Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (October–November 2019)

Group exhibitions

  • Vivarium, Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico (2024)
  • Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, Brownsville, Texas
  • Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, California
  • Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas
  • Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, New York
  • Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico
  • Los Tres Modernos, Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (July–August 2022)
  • Corazón y Orgullo, Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (September–November 2021)
  • Sin Fronteras, Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (July–August 2019)
  • Spanish Market Exhibition, Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (July–August 2018)
  • Spanish Market, Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (July–August 2017)
  • Vívido, Evoke Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico (July–August 2016)

Early life and education

McGrath Muñiz was born in 1975 in New York City. His family later moved to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, where he completed his schooling.[1] He studied painting and drawing privately with artist Fran Cervoni, and in 1996 traveled to Europe to look closely at Old Master paintings in museums there.[1] He later opened a small art school in Aguadilla and made extended trips to the Caribbean and to Central and South America.[1]

He entered the School of Fine Arts of San Juan in 1993. He graduated in 2003 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting, magna cum laude.[2] He then enrolled at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where he received both the Academic/Artistic Honors Fellowship and the Gelman Foundation Scholarship. He completed his Master of Fine Arts in painting there in 2006, graduating summa cum laude.[2]

Career

McGrath Muñiz presented his MFA thesis exhibition, Iconsumer, at SCAD in 2006. The show then traveled to the Museo de las Américas in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and to El Convento Las Capuchinas in Antigua, Guatemala.[1] His early career drew significant recognition. In 2007, the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) in Puerto Rico gave him its Prima Opera award for emerging artists. The following year he received the Francisco de Goya Award at Sala Barna Global Present Art in Barcelona, Spain.[2]

He relocated to Houston, Texas, where he has lived with his wife Blanca and their son Francis.[3] In September 2017, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico and destroyed his childhood home, studio, and much of the artwork he had stored there.[2] The experience changed the direction of his work. He has since focused more on personal and cultural memory, and on the fragility of things people take for granted.[2]

In 2022, US Games Systems published his Tarot Neocolonial de las Americas — a 78-card illustrated tarot deck with a 92-page book. The card titles appear in Spanish, English, Portuguese, and French. The deck draws on five centuries of Latin American colonial history, filtered through the visual language of tarot and Renaissance painting.[4]

In 2024 the Albuquerque Museum presented his exhibition Vivarium: Exploring Intersections of Art, Storytelling, and Resilience of the Living World.[5] His solo exhibition Recolecciones / Recollections opened at the Reading Public Museum in Reading, Pennsylvania in May 2025, running through August 2025.[2]

Artistic practice

McGrath Muñiz is best known for two bodies of work. The first consists of large oil paintings on canvas in which Renaissance and Baroque compositional arrangements are populated with fast-food logos, corporate brands, and celebrity imagery. The second consists of retablos — small, hand-painted altarpieces in the Spanish colonial tradition — which he uses to address similar themes on an intimate scale.[3]

He has spoken directly about his intentions:

My work responds to our globalized neo-liberal consumer society by tracing its origins to the time of Columbus. Adopting Renaissance pictorial techniques on canvas and retablos reminiscent of Spanish colonial art allows me to emulate earlier indoctrination strategies and devices from the time of the conquest and colonization of the Americas. Through satirical narratives, anachronisms and a re-contextualization of history, I reflect on the colonial roots of the ruling Corpocracy with its Neo-colonial ramifications.[3]

Since Hurricane Maria, his work has also turned toward themes of personal memory, the loss of the analog world, and the role of art in preserving cultural identity.[2]

Museum collections

McGrath Muñiz's work is held in the permanent collections of the following public institutions:

Awards and honors

Publications

  • Tarot Neocolonial de las Americas (78-card deck and 92-page book). US Games Systems, 2022. ISBN 1646710762[4]

Selected press coverage

  • "A Houston Artist Packs Justice, Humor and Insight Into This 'Neocolonial' Tarot Deck," Molly Glentzer, Texas Monthly[2]
  • "Modern Mythos," Kathaleen Roberts, Albuquerque Journal (2020)[2]
  • "Lamentations: Disaster-Capitalism, Puerto Rico and The Art of Patrick McGrath-Muñiz," Christian Sarker, HuffPost (2017)[2]
  • "Patrick McGrath Muñiz," American Art Collector (2016)[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Puerto Rican Artist Patrick McGrath Muñiz". Art in the Americas. Retrieved 8 May 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 "Patrick McGrath Muñiz: Recolecciones/Recollections". Reading Public Museum. Retrieved 8 May 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 "Artist Statement". patrickmcgrath-art.com. Retrieved 8 May 2026.
  4. 1 2 "Tarot Neocolonial de las Americas". The Haunted Bookshop. Retrieved 8 May 2026.
  5. 1 2 "Patrick McGrath: Biography". MutualArt. Retrieved 8 May 2026.
  6. 1 2 3 "Patrick McGrath Muñiz". Heidi Vaughan Fine Art. Retrieved 8 May 2026.
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