Freddy Rodríguez

FREDDY RODRÍGUEZ
BORN 1945 IN SANTIAGO DE LOS CABALLEROS, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. DIED 2022 IN QUEENS, NEW YORK.
The work of Freddy Rodríguez (b. 1945, Dominican Republic) blends emotionally and socio-politically-motivated themes with rigorous formal concerns. Over the course of his career, Rodríguez employed abstract geometry, gestural figuration, collage, and vibrant color to address themes including the conquest and colonization of native people, the figure of the cimarrón, Catholicism, dictatorship, and baseball.

Born in 1945 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, Rodríguez moved to New York City in 1963. Feeling his life was in danger due to the local political climate, Rodríguez fled Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship (1930-1961), a period marked by severe social and political upheaval. In New York City, Rodríguez proceeded to study painting at the Art Students League and at the New School for Social Research; and textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Being drafted into the U.S. army in 1966, Rodríguez resided between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico before settling again permanently in New York City in 1968. Having lived and worked in New York for more than five decades, Rodríguez’s oeuvre evinced his response to tendencies that shaped the City’s artistic milieu, including Hard-edge Painting, Geometric Abstraction, and Minimalism. At the same time, the Dominican Republic, Caribbean culture, and transnational concerns continuously inspired the subjects and ethos of his work. Rodríguez passed away peacefully in 2022.

Freddy Rodríguez in his Flushing, NY studio, by Manolo Salas, 2016
Freddy Rodríguez photographed in his studio in Queens, NY, by Manolo Salas, 2016

Rodríguez had exhibited in numerous group and individual shows, including The Illusive Eye, El Museo del Barrio, New York City (2016); Caribbean Art at the Crossroads of the World, Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2014); and Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC (2013); among many others. His work can be found in various public collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC; El Museo del Barrio, New York City; The Newark Museum, New Jersey; Jersey City Museum, New Jersey; Queens Museum of Art, New York City; Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York City; and the Museo de Las Casas Reales, Santo Domingo. He is also the subject of a forthcoming monograph by the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Acting Chief Curator and Curator of Latinx Art, Dr. E. Carmen Ramos, as part of the A Ver: Revisioning Art History book series published by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.
Working in Series

Throughout his career, Rodríguez worked in "series." His first and longest series was Geometries, which he began in the late 1960s and continued to expand and develop until the early 2000s.

“In 1969, while at FIT I did my first Geometric paintings. I still have some of these paintings. These paintings were informed by the architecture of the city. I had a job downtown and during my lunch hour I would sketch the buildings around me and later turn them into paintings.”

Rodríguez in conversation with Rocío Aranda-Alvarado (2015)
Left to Right: Amor Africano, 1974 Danza Africana, 1974 Danza de Carnaval, 1974

Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.

GEOMETRIES SERIES 1970s

Rodríguez’s geometric works from the 1970s blend emotionally and politically-motivated themes with rigorous formal concerns—evincing not only the artist’s keen sense of color and composition, but also his shrewd engagement with relevant socio-cultural themes. While works from the Merengue series such as Princesa del Caribe (1974) utilize color and form to celebrate music, dance, and the mixing of races in the Caribbean, other compositions reference literature. Many of Rodríguez’s geometries from the 1970s constitute his visual responses to the literary works of esteemed Latin American writers including Gabriel García Márquez, Rómulo Gallegos, Mario Vargas Llosa, Pablo Neruda, and Julio Cortázar.

Listen to Freddy Rodríguez's video interview, in which he discuss these three paintings during the Smithsonian American Art Museum's exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art here.
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Y me quedé sin nombre, 1974, 70 x 36 in
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Rodríguez in his Chelsea Studio, New York, 1974
- Freddy Rodríguez looking at his studies in his studio located at 133 West 22nd Street, New York
- Freddy Rodríguez standing alongside paintings Danza de Carnaval (1974), Amor Africano (1974), and Untitled (1970)
“In 1972 I sold one of my geometric paintings to the Aldrich Museum in CT for their exhibition “Contemporary Reflections.” Eva Hesse was in the show as well as other well known artists. That painting belongs to the Bronx museum today. … In 1972 I showed several geometric paintings at NYU along with Carmen Herrera, Eduardo Ramírez, Arnold Belkin, and Tony Bechara.”

Rodríguez in conversation with Rocío Aranda-Alvarado (2015)
Selected 1970s Preparatory Sketches

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Selected 1970s Exhibitions
- Cayman Gallery, Freddy Rodriguez, New York, 1978 (Exhibition Poster)
- Cayman Gallery, Freddy Rodríguez, New York, 1978
Bura Bura, 1981, 42 x 58 in

Private Collection, Madrid, Spain

GEOMETRIES Series 1980s

Within his 1980s abstractions, Rodríguez began exploring a strategic integration of refined geometry and expressive brushwork—thereby melding two artistic approaches often considered oppositional. Despite their lack of figuration, the artist’s rich palette and suggestive titles ground his visual lexicon in quotidian realities. Rodríguez created the painting ¿Sabrá FR Pintar? (1980), for example, in response to an article published in the Dominican Republic. In the article, a critic questioned whether Rodríguez—who energetically embraced abstraction despite a local preference for realistic figuration—possessed adequate technical painting skills.
El Corazon del Quijote, 1982, 70 x 48

Artists
Erotic/Heart Series (1981-1983)

Rodríguez’s Erotic/Heart series explores themes including Catholicism, voodoo, and dictatorship, while drawing from the bolero music tradition, which provides a starting point from which to examine and balance darker historical subjects.
Symbolism Series (1983-1985)
Paradise for a Tourist Brochure, 1990, 66 x 60 in

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Trujillo Series (1983-1991)

Rodríguez's Trujillo series was inspired by the events that took place during the thirty-year dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The series utilized multiple symbols to represent the suffering endured by the Dominican people during this difficult time in their history. Rodríguez repeatedly used flowers and butterflies to respresent the silent witnesses of the horrors that took place.

Read more about the inspiration for and meaning behind Paradise for a Tourist Brochure (1990), the Trujillo series, and the acquisition of the piece by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. here.
Fireworks Series (1984-1985)
El Cimarrón Y La Comedia Divina, 1986, 44 x 40 in

Private Collection, New York, NY

Cimarrón Series (1985-1987)

The Dominican Republic, Caribbean culture, and transnational concerns continuously inspired the subjects and ethos of Rodríguez's work. His interest in Caribbean history and the African diaspora led him to explore the plight of the cimarrón, or fugitive slave. Throughout this series of work, beginning in 1985, the artist repeated certain symbols, including the human leg and the fish. To keep slaves from leaving their New World plantations, owners would sometimes cut off their toes. Rodríguez’s human legs with toeless feet depict this terrifying violence. By including gallery reviews taken from the New York Times and the MoMA calendar, in El Cimarrón Deja El Monte (1986), Rodríguez gestures towards the exclusion of artists of color from mainstream exhibitions in New York, combining both histories and concurrent occurrences of racial inequity. Fish, meanwhile, represent Rodríguez's departure from the Dominican Republic. In works such as America (1986), the artist’s symbols seem to exist in an aqueous, otherworldly realm; yet by embedding snippets from concurrent newspapers and art magazines, Rodríguez tied his work to a contemporary culture and politics.
Cosas del Paraíso, 1989, 60 x 42 in

Private Collection, Princeton, NJ

Paradise Series (1986-1990)

In discussing his Paradise series, Rodríguez mentioned a letter sent from Christopher Columbus to the Pope, in which the explorer described the New World as “paradise.” For native populations, the arrival of European colonizers brought illness, war, and cultural practices that would decimate aspects of existing civilizations. According to Rodríguez, the tropical flora stood as beautiful, silent, innocent witnesses to these atrocities, and therefore becomes a fraught symbol in his paintings. The paintings comprising the Paradise series are dense and multifaceted, with collaged elements, including New York Times articles and printed images.
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Cenizas, 1988, 60 x 42 in
Private Collection, Palm Desert, CA
Selected 1980s Exhibitions
Casabe y Cruz II, 1991, 48" diameter

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

COLONIZATION Series (1991-1993)

Within his Colonization series, Rodríguez employed the tondo to reference both the earth being round and casabe bread. Upon coming into contact with undeveloped lands and preexisting civilizations, European explorers sought to gain control, enforcing European structure and religion. The artist depicts this determination to cleanse and order the “unwieldy” New World by superimposing pristine geometry atop canvases covered with earth. According to Rodríguez, his use of crushed glass in many of these works alludes to the violence or punishment experienced by indigenous communities at the hand of the Catholic Church. This series is the first in which Rodríguez utilized shaped canvases.

Read more about the inspiration for and meaning behind Casabe y Cruz II (1991) and the acquisition of the piece by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. here.
Casula, 1993, 24 x 34 in

VESTMENT Series (1993-1996)

The works in Rodríguez’s Vestment series address the human embodiment of Catholicism. Triangular in form and adult-sized in scale, these works immediately conjure the human body, expanding upon the artist’s previous explorations of shaped canvases, while imbuing abstract geometries with narrative content. Smaller triangles and suggestive openings reference genitalia, thereby encouraging viewers to consider the sexual regulations implicit in the religion, including the ways in which celibacy preserves power. At the same time, Rodríguez’s pristine geometries, crisp edges, and evocative palette recall the hierarchy, ceremony, and formality of the Catholic tradition.
- The Good Pope, 1994, 66 x 36 in
Modern and Contemporary Art from the Dominican Republic, Americas Society, New York, 1996

In 1996, the Americas Society held the first comprehensive survey of twentieth-century Dominican art presented in the United States. Scholars Edward J. Sullivan, Jeannette Miller, Marianne de Tolentino, and Elizabeth Ferrer wrote texts for the exhibition catalogue. Rodríguez's four works Iglesia del Caribe (1991), La otra conquista (1991), New World Order in Paradise (1991), The Silence of the Lambs in Paradise (1991) were included.
Selected 1990s Exhibitions
Best Doctors #4, 2000

GEOMETRIES Series (1999-2000)
"Best Doctors" & "Political Statement" Series

In the 1990s, Rodríguez pivoted toward a complex, highly precise vocabulary of overlaid, interlocking rectangular forms. Rodríguez responded to social, cultural, and political occurrences. In the Best Doctors series, named for an annual New York Magazine guide, Rodríguez commented about a lack of transparency in the United States healthcare system. Simultaneously, many of these works evoke urban architecture, as well as our increasing engagement with technology and multiple windows layered across a computer screen.
A-Rod Six of Thirteen, 2007, 40 x 40 in

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

BASEBALL SERIES (2000S)

Rodríguez considered baseball a defining element of Dominican culture; the sport has become a symbol of national pride, and has had astounding social and economic repercussions for the small island nation. At the same time, baseball has contributed to the visibility of Dominicans in the United States, and acts as a channel through which US citizens learn cultural and historical information about the Dominican Republic. Rodríguez examined the theme of baseball through sculptural works, installations, and paintings, which often combine text and image. One of Rodríguez's best known baseball series involves painted images of celebrity players such as Alex Rodríguez. To create these works, the artist sourced photographs of players from The New York Times, and converted the images into silhouettes. Rodríguez suggested that the silhouette speaks to racial equality as it does not reference skin color, instead focusing on accomplishment. Rodríguez gestured towards the expansive nature of these players’ fame; they are embedded in a collective popular consciousness that transcends the realm of sports.

Read more about the inspiration for Rodroguez’s A-Rod series and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s acquisition of this piece here.

Listen to Rodríguez discuss America's Pastime here.
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What a Catch, 2007, 24 x 24 in
Selected 2000s Exhibitions
De La Nada a La Nada Series (2010)
“The whole idea of this new series was to express myself freely with paint. Not only was I using a new support for my art, but I also started to use new tools to make the work: jigsaw, drill, circular saw, and to move the paint around after pouring it on the surface, I used a hairdryer. I was very excited and happy with the results.”

Read more about specific pieces from the series here, in an interview between Rodríguez and Diálogo 365.
Freddy Rodríguez, Tsunami #4, 2011

Tsunami Series (2011)

Rodríguez's "Tsunami" Series was exhibited in Tokyo in 2013 following the Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami that occured in Japan in March of 2011. The terrible natural disasters took the lives of around 20,000 people and Rodríguez's paintings were a method of exploring artistic representations of the distructive force of a tsunami.
GOLD Series (2015-2019)
Rodríguez's final series of paintings explored the scientific origins of gold, as well as the history of gold in art and society. In order to conduct research for the series, the artist sought and was awarded a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF), which facilitated travel to and study within the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The resulting works address economics, politics, and corruption. At the same time, Rodríguez suggested that gold lust is something that unifies humanity, regardless of nationality, class, or party affiliation. Furthermore, he posited that visual art is the new gold, offering opportunity for investment, and in turn conferring status upon the owner.
- Triptych, Life and Death, 2016, 50 x 126 in
Selected 2010s & 2020s Exhibitions
Mulato de Tal, 1974, 80 x 40 in

60th Biennale di Venezia, 2024

Freddy Rodríguez's Mulato de Tal (1974), is currently on view at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia's "Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere" curated by Adriano Pedrosa, April 20th - November 24th, 2024.

"The backdrop for the work is a world rife with multifarious crises concerning the movement and existence of people across countries, nations, territories and borders, which reflect the perils and pitfalls of language, translation, nationality, expressing differences and disparities conditioned by identity, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, freedom, and wealth. In this panorama, the expression 'Foreigners Everywhere' has several meanings. [...] Artists have always traveled and moved about, under various circumstances, through cities, countries and continents, something that has only accelerated since the late 20th century—ironically a period marked by increasing restrictions regarding the dislocation or displacement of people. The Biennale Arte 2024’s primary focus is thus artists who are themselves foreigners, immigrants, expatriates, diasporic, émigrés, exiled, or refugees—particularly those who have moved between the Global South and the Global North. Migration and decolonization are key themes here."

-Adriano Pedrosa, Curator of the 60th International Art Exhibition
In Mulato de tal (1974), bold lines coalesce into zigzagging geometric forms that together suggest a twisting head, chest, and legs — an evocation that is heightened by the work's almost life-size, rectangular-shaped canvas. Despite a resemblance to hard-edge painting, which aspired to a more impersonal, systematic geometry, Freddy Rodriguez's strokes are far more gestural, leaving traces of his brush that evidence his hand's movements. Mulato de tal is part of a larger body of work inspired by the writings of Latin American authors on the politics of freedom and its potential. This work takes its title from Miguel Ángel Asturias's 1963 novel Mulato de tal [A Kind of Mulatto], which revolves around a poor farmer who makes a deal with the devil. Imbued with Catholic and Mayan references as well as descriptions of fissures in the landscape, twisting bodies, and a rhythmic earth, the novel alludes to the colonization of Guatemala and its dictatorship.
Rodríguez painted Mulato de tal in New York, eleven years after he left the Dominican Republic following dictator Rafael Trujillo's assassination. New York offered a distance that, as Rodriguez reflects, "gave me an objectivity which would have been impossible in the past." As suggested by its title, the artwork responds to the racial taxonomies imposed by Trujillo's brutal anti-Blackness campaign. If the painting's forms recall a person, then its muddy-red and deep-blue color fields might evoke a landscape of bloodshed, illuminating how genocide, racialization, and colonialism repeat into the present, across geographies, and are held within the body and the land. At the same time, the painting's forms vibrate within a canvas that constrains them, perhaps suggesting Rodriguez's own yearning for freedom in the context of his displacement and racialization in the United States.

Excerpt from Forecast Form: Art in the Carribean Diaspora, 1990s-Today
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Public Spaces
The Garden, Public School 37, New York, 1995

Freddy Rodriguez was commissioned to create an installation at Public School 37 in the Bronx, which he completed in 1995. This commission was part of New York's Percent for Art Program started in 1982 by former mayor Edward I. Koch. The program allocates one percent of eligible city-funded building projects for the construction of public art works that allow art to flourish beyond the confines of the traditional museum or gallery space. The installation includes terra cotta covered columns surrounding the outdoor patio of the school. Rodriguez decorated the columns with blue tiles embellished with flowers and hummingbirds, referencing many of his Paradise series paintings, such as “Cosas del Paraíso” and “Guacamayo Todavia.”

Read more about the design here.
THE FLIGHT 587 MEMORIAL, Queens, NY, 2006

On the 12th of November, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Las Américas International Airport in Santo Domingo crashed. The flight encountered terbulance soon after taking off from New York City and crashed into the small residential neighborhood of Belle Harbor, Queens. Aboard the flight were 251 passengers and 9 crew, all of whom perished, along with five individuals on the ground.

On November 12, 2006, five years after the tragic event, a memorial was unveiled near Rockaway Beach, NY commemorating the 265 people who lost their lives. Freddy Rodríguez won the commission to design the monument, which stands facing the Atlantic Ocean in the direction of the Dominican Republic. The brick structure is engraved with the names of the victims, and bears the inscription of a poem in both Spanish and English by the Dominican poet Pedro Mir: "Despues no quiero mas que paz" or "Afterwards I want only peace."

Read more about the instillation, comission, and event here.
Sugar Hill Children's Museum Mural, New York (2016-2017)

From 2016 to 2017, Freddy Rodríguez took part in an exhibition and event series entitled "Z is for Zigzag" at the Sugar Hill Children's Museum in Harlem, New York. Along with three other artists, Freddy Rodríguez was invited to create a large installation, which was part of his late Gold series.The museum specified that this series was meant to present "intersecting perspectives across the Museum’s immediate community of Northern Manhattan."
PUBLICATIONS

Freddy Rodríguez

FREDDY RODRÍGUEZ

Working in Series

GEOMETRIES SERIES 1970s

Rodríguez in his Chelsea Studio, New York, 1974

Selected 1970s Preparatory Sketches

Selected 1970s Exhibitions

GEOMETRIES Series 1980s

Erotic/Heart Series (1981-1983)

Symbolism Series (1983-1985)

Trujillo Series (1983-1991)

Fireworks Series (1984-1985)

Cimarrón Series (1985-1987)

Paradise Series (1986-1990)

Selected 1980s Exhibitions

COLONIZATION Series (1991-1993)

VESTMENT Series (1993-1996)

Modern and Contemporary Art from the Dominican Republic, Americas Society, New York, 1996

Selected 1990s Exhibitions

GEOMETRIES Series (1999-2000)

BASEBALL SERIES (2000S)

Selected 2000s Exhibitions

De La Nada a La Nada Series (2010)

Tsunami Series (2011)

GOLD Series (2015-2019)

Selected 2010s & 2020s Exhibitions

60th Biennale di Venezia, 2024

Public Spaces

The Garden, Public School 37, New York, 1995

THE FLIGHT 587 MEMORIAL, Queens, NY, 2006

Sugar Hill Children's Museum Mural, New York (2016-2017)

PUBLICATIONS

America's Pastime

A to Z of Caribbean Art

Caribbean

CUADERNOS DE POETICA NO. 36

El Dorado (Myths of Gold)

Forecast Form: Art in the Caribbean Diaspora, 1990s-Today

Memory and Postcolonial Studies

Modern and Contemporary Art of the Dominican Republic

Our America

Something to Say