Rubén Rodríguez

Painter | Serigrapher | Contemporary Artist

Ruben Rodriguez’s body of work is defined by a fundamental interest in the lines that define our bodies in not only their complex hybridizations but also the context and the current circumstances in which we live. Their emotionally charged vibrancy conveys the artist’s personal archive of desires, memories, and obsessions linked to the notion of destiny in its unpredictable and finite cycle. His work is enigmatic in its simplicity and high level of suggestion evoking deep ontological questions related to the human condition and its permanent struggle with loneliness and sexuality.

Ruben Rodriguez (b. 1959 in Cardenas, Cuba) graduated from the National School of Arts (ENA, Havana) in 1980. From 1998 until 2001, he was the Professor of Serigraphy at the Higher Institute of Art (ISA, Havana).

Ruben Rodriguez is represented in the collections of The Joan Miro Foundation (Spain), National Museum of Fine Art, Havana (Cuba), Luly Duke Foundation Amistad, New York, Museum of Modern Art, Johannesburg (South Africa), Museum of Modern Art (Peru).

ARTWORKS

STATEMENT

The female figure has always been the absolute protagonist of my paintings, drawings and engravings. As a man and as an artist, I sincerely admire and respect a women’s capacity for procreation. I see motherhood as an act of sublime beauty, along with the delicacy and sensuality that emerges from the naked female body. That’s why breasts are an omnipresent symbol of fertility in my visual repertoire. As a result of my creative process, my characters are always anonymous, headless, and ambiguous in their physical appearance, since I’m interested in preserving the identity of my muses. I also value the limits of individual’s desire as a stimulus for the erotic imagination.

My body of work is defined by a fundamental interest for the contour lines that not only define the bodies in their complex hybridizations, but also determines the context and the current circumstances in which I live. At the same time, they represent my personal archive of desires, memories, and obsessions linked to the notion of destiny, in its quality of unpredictable and finite cycle. For all these reasons, I think that my work is enigmatic in its simplicity and its high level of suggestion, which activates in the viewer ontological questions, related to the human condition and its permanent struggle against loneliness, as well as ideas about love and sex.