Arnaldo Roche-Rabell
"Give Him Wings and He Will Fly" (2013)
"Give Him Wings and He Will Fly" (2013)
Painter. He began his education at the Lucchetti Art School in Santurce, where he had Lope Max Díaz as a teacher. Later he obtained a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Puerto Rico (1978) and then studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned a master’s degree in fine arts in 1984. Since then, he devoted himself entirely to painting. He participated in numerous international events and was awarded many awards and distinctions. He was able to show his work in numerous solo exhibitions in museums and galleries since 1984, and his paintings have been exhibited in Puerto Rico, the United States, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Germany and Venezuela, among others. His work is part of important collections in several countries of the world, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Fine Arts Museum in Caracas, Venezuela, and the Cultural Foundation in México. He developed a unique stylistic vocabulary, based on the application of brightly colored layers that he then covered with black and rubbed in with the spatula to produce dramatic and revealing images. His work is characterized as neo‑Expressionist, and he addressed themes such as identity associated with the Afro‑Caribbean culture, the sense of belonging, memory and trauma.