WHEN GENE HACKMAN died in February, many Santa Feans were unaware that the longtime resident had dabbled in the local art scene, and they may have even dined below Hackman’s vibrant paintings at Jinja Bar & Bistro on Guadalupe Street. After his passing, fans discovered the trove of Hackman’s mostly oil paintings and digital prints hanging at the restaurant, leaving flowers and notes in memoriam. Owner Doug Lanham, a one-time partner with Hackman in the 23-year-old business, recently consolidated and remounted around two dozen of the late actor’s artworks at Jinja’s Santa Fe location, while Nicole Namingha of Niman Fine Art completed a catalog of the unsigned works. Santa Fe artist Susan Contreras says Hackman, who posed behind dramatic masks for some of her paintings, was part of a regular painting group some years ago with her late husband, Elias Rivera. Both men studied at the Art Students League of New York in the 1950s. The largest work at Jinja is a beach scene with a punchy palette and a breezy spirit that nods to the bistro’s pan-Asian menu and Polynesian drinks. Lanham remembers it “took a few beers” for him to convince Hackman to paint the piece. “I went up to his studio and he had all these wires hanging from the ceiling with these tropical leaves he brought in,” Lanham says of the plants that frame the landscape, which is reminiscent of Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian period. “His fellow artists would come in and say, ‘That’s not a Gauguin, that’s a Go-Gene,’ ” the restaurateur adds.
See Gene Hackman’s paintings when you dine at Jinja Bar & Bistro, 510 N. Guadalupe St., Santa Fe.