Freddy Rodríguez (artist)

Freddy Rodríguez (born 1945) is an artist from the Dominican Republic who has lived and worked in the United States since 1963. Much of his work takes the form of large, colorful geometric abstractions. His paintings have been widely exhibited and are held in several important collections.

Freddy Rodríguez was born in Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic in 1945. His family were artists. Rodríguez immigrated to the United States in 1963 at the age of eighteen. In New York he spent much time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was particularly interested in the work of Piet Mondrian. He studied painting at the Art Students League of New York and The New School, and obtained a degree in textile design from the Fashion Institute of Technology. In the 1980s he joined with several other Dominican visual artists including Bismark Victoria, Eligio Reynoso, Magno Laracuente and Tito Canepa to form the "Dominican Visual Artists of New York". This group succeeded in obtaining sponsorship for exhibitions of Dominican Art in popular locations. In 1991 the New York Foundation for the Arts named him "Gregory Millard Fellow in Painting".

In 1992 he was a NYSCA Artist in Residence at El Museo del Barrio.

Rodríguez was influenced by Rembrandt, Paul Cézanne and Piet Mondrian. His style incorporates elements of Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Minimalism. In 2011 the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired three of his early works, painted in the early 1970s. Tall and narrow, the abstract paintings named Danza Africana, Amor Africano and Danza de Carnaval represent the energy of Dominican music through vibrant colors and zigzagging lines.

A reviewer has discussed the political messages in his work, mourning the impact of colonialism and subsequent dictatorships on the original Caribbean paradise, saying, "The political messages are subsumed by the artist's desire to create beautiful paintings fusing Renaissance and modern traditions. Integrating illusionistic space with flattened surfaces, and contrasting loose and tight brushstrokes, the artist enters a dialogue with centuries of art concerned with these same pictorial issues."

In 1994, Rodríguez's work was shown as part of the American contingent at the IV Bienal Internacional de Pintura en Cuenca, Ecuador. Other American artists exhibiting at this show were Donald Locke, Philemona Williamson, Whitfield Lovell and Emilio Cruz. His works were exhibited in the Jersey City Museum between 13 December 1995 and 17 February 1996 in a show called Priest: The Spirit and the Flesh. Some more recent exhibitions that have included his work:

• 2005: Newark Museum, America’s Pastime: Portraits of the Dominican Dream, Works by Freddy Rodríguez
• 2010, November: Edge Zones Art Center Duodecad = 12
• 2010, December: Praxis International Art Colorforms
• 2010, December: ZONES Art Fair, Wynwood
• 2012, September: CUE Art Foundation Creating a Living Legacy

• Lovell & Lippard 2003, p. 119.
• Abalos 1998, p. 117.
• Smithsonian American Art Museum 2011.
• ^ ArtSlant.