10/14/2026
Wrapping up Hispanic Heritage Month with a look at this recently installed work “Señora Lapislázuli 1” by Cesár Rangel Ramos! 🤩
Acquired by SAMA last year, this work is on view NOW in the Latin American Art Center on the second floor of the east tower. 🆕
In 2016, Cesár Rangel Ramos developed an evocative technique that he calls “albigraphy.” Using wet abrasives on plexiglass, Rangel scratches and rubs, drawing dust and water that pool on the surface. These marks dry into images, tracing Rangel’s choreographed movement and friction.
“Señora Lapislázuli 1” maps creation and the cosmos, envisioning a landscape imbued with ideas from Catholicism, Mesoamerican religious traditions, and Greco-Roman concepts. The mountainous earth grounds the image, its vivid folds recalling the blue mantle worn by the feminine divine in Christian art with echoes across traditions. A deer, drinking from a pool, symbolizes mystical virtue. The night sky envelops the striking verticality of a female deity, who stands majestic below a celestial orb, bespeaking stories of genesis interwoven across human belief.
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César Rangel Ramos (Mexican, born 1977), “Señora Lapislázuli 1”, 2025, Albigraphy (water, quartz, sandpaper friction, and plant binder of cactus and seeds on black polymethylmethacrylate), 97 1/4 × 72 13/16 in. (247 × 184.9 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with the June Ledlow His Endowment, 2025.8 © César Rangel Ramos. Image courtesy of the artist and Galería Karen Huber. Photography by Ramiro Chaves.
