NEW YORK, NY.- Hutchinson Modern & Contemporary, a new art gallery specializing in Latin American, Latinx and Caribbean art, is presenting its inaugural exhibition Freddy Rodríguez: Early Paintings 1970-1990. Spanning the first two decades of the sixty-year decade-long artistic career of the New York-based Dominican-born artist, the exhibition will be on view by appointment only in the gallery’s new space at 47 East 64th Street from October 22, 2020 to January 8, 2021. There is an online viewing room on the gallery’s website.
An array of Rodríguez’s paintings from the 1970s and 1980s, including works from his Paradise (1985-1988) and his Cimarrón (1985-1988) series, alongside a selection of his never before exhibited collages revealing Rodríguez’s multifaceted and varied practice are featured in the exhibition.
Since the 1970s, the artist has created a consistent body of work adopting former Hard-edge, Geometric Abstraction, and Minimalist aesthetics seen in his Geometries (1970-1990) series, later expanding upon expressionist vocabularies to convey his Afro-Dominican heritage, as well as the transnational dialogues between the Dominican diaspora and the homeland.
Born in 1945 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, Rodríguez moved to New York City in 1963 after fleeing Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship (1930-1961), a period marked by severe social and political upheaval. In 1961, Trujillo’s three-decade-long dictatorship ended with his assassination, following several years of political turmoil, and later culminating with the 1965 Civil War. 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. Here he proceeded to study painting at the New School for Social Research, and textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Living and working between Greenwich Village, West Village, Chelsea, and Williamsburg during the seventies and eighties, the artist explores the relationship between personal narratives and collective memory in Latinx communities.
Presenting a highly abbreviated view of Rodríguez’s oeuvre, the exhibition and the online viewing room introduce one of the many Latinx artists continuing to challenge assumptions of Caribbean national belonging, suggesting myriad ways to look at island-based and diasporic relations. Bridging geometric abstraction and figurative language, Rodriguez’s works on view attest that the artist’s exploration has not only been artistic, but also political in character.
Rodríguez has 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 other. 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.
