Arturo Rodriguez is a painter to the core — but NFTs appeal to his sense of adventure
Arturo Rodriguez may not be a household name, but at 66 he has achieved enviable success. His paintings appear in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
But what is most important to him, he says, is that he has painted for himself, without bending to commercial trends. “To do that, it was a big sacrifice. You have to sacrifice everything to do your work,” he says.
READ MORE: About the Miami Herald NFT Collection
Still today, he and his wife Demi, also an artist, live simply in a Miami house that is more studio — his separate from hers — than home. Walls are lined with thousands of CDs — jazz, classical, blues, but no rap or rock — and the books that consume his non-painting hours. Painting and drawing are done standing; reading happens in bed.
Furniture is afterthought. In their world, Facebook does not exist.
Born in central Cuba, Rodriguez moved to Spain when he was 15, fleeing the military conscription by the Castro regime that seemed sure to come. Madrid brought regular opportunity to visit the Prado and other museums. But before he was 18, he was off to Miami.
“I was a horrible student,” he admits. “It was difficult for me to adapt to this society. I didn’t speak the language. But I was lucky to find some friends who read and write. We shared ideas.”
Those ideas percolate through his reading hours, his sleep, his trips to the bank while he draws incessantly in sketchbooks. (“I’m obsessive,” he says.) They permeate the subconscious that emerges on his canvases in fragmented images and scenes of uncertainty, humor and wonder. A horse appears upside down, drinking from a skylight. Mondrian’s primary-colored geometrics glimmer through the jungle. He and Demi are adrift on Biscayne Bay on a raft fashioned from painting canvases, his own head enlarged and distorted in dreamlike fantasy.
It should be no surprise that Franz Kafka and Joseph Conrad are among his favorite authors. His love for comics is evident; in his young years, he earned $200 per week drawing them. Today, his large canvases sell for around $50,000.
Though Rodriguez works exclusively with paint on canvas — “I”ll never make a video,” he says — releasing his first NFTs in the Miami Herald Collection appeals to his sense of adventure.
“I like to take risks,” he says. “All my work is risk-taking.”
AT A GLANCE
Miami Herald Collection: Launches April 22 at nft.miamiherald.com; sign up opens April 1.
Arturo Rodriguez can be reached through LnS Gallery, lnsgallery.com.
This story was originally published April 4, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
