20,000 / San Francisco, California
In San Francisco, during the period after the 1906 earthquake and until the 1950’s, there were dozens of amazing theaters, most of them in central Market Street area (Strand, Unique, Embassy, Rialto, Granada, Regal, Imperia, Pantages, Tivoli, Hub, State, Egyptian, and others) 20,000 is an estimation of the cumulative capacity of the now empty or lost theater seats that once populated Market Street. The loss of those remarkable single screen theaters is not unique to San Francisco. Those 20,000 missing seats on Market Street and all those in theaters like them worldwide are gone forever… yet they are still alive in our collective memories. Let’s go see a movie at one of San Francisco’s remaining single screen theaters such as the Vogue, Bridge, Clay, Balboa, Castro, Roxie, Empire, and 4Star.
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Rafael Landea received his MFA from La Plata University, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a 2011 recipient of a San Francisco Arts Commission Grant for Individual Artists and he was featured in the 2012 “Our Radar”, Creative Capital database of art projects.
His works are included in the public collections at MaM (Museum of Art and Memory), and MPB (Fine Arts Museum Buenos Aires) Argentina.
His most recent solo exhibitions were “1930” Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum, “Maps of Silence”, a multimedia installation at the Exploratorium Museum of Art Science and Human Perception in San Francisco, and “Malvinas” Museum Malvinas (ESMA) Buenos Aires.
Other solo exhibition venues include Grace Cathedral 1055 Gallery, San Francisco, CA, and, Archimboldo Gallery, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Group exhibition highlights include “Performance” at Gensler San Francisco, “Madres de Plaza de Mayo” CC Haroldo Conti, Buenos Aires.
Landea has worked as a set designer and painter for theater in Argentina for more than 15 years. He has also been actively involved in designing and producing murals nationally and internationally; the latest in San Francisco, funded by Artery Project, and collaborations in Turin and Genoa, Italy.
In 2019 created two large murals, Architecture University and the Law Library both in La Plata, Argentina.
He has created illustrations for magazines and books for important Argentinean publishers as Anfibia, Malisia, EME, Ediciones B, and Universities, the latest in 2021: “Malvinas mi Casa” a book based on a diary written in 1829 in Malvinas/Falklands.
Landea was selected for the 2020 Prequalified Artist Pool by San Francisco Arts Commission. 
