Elias Rivera is a painter whose work both creates timeless images and displays virtuosity of technique. During his long career, Rivera has painted the human drama as it unfolds in settings as varied as civil-rights demonstrations, subways, rodeos, and the marketplaces of Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. His classical training and Old Master technique evoke a true narrative quality rarely seen in contemporary realist painting. This long-awaited, lavishly illustrated monograph spans forty years of Rivera's work and is the first to document his most recent large-scale paintings of unique marketplace, street scenes, and the people who inspire them. Regardless of the particulars of culture, place and time that appear in each painting, Elias Rivera consistently captures the essence of humanity. AUTHOR: Edward Lucie-Smith is an internationally known art historian, born in Jamaica and educated in Britain, who has more than one hundred titles to his credit. Gene Hackman is a two-time Academy Award winning actor and, when in Santa Fe, participates in weekly painting sessions with Elias Rivera. ILLUSTRATIONS: 200 colour illustrations