Roberto Alberty
"Los poetas *" (1964)
"Los poetas *" (1964)
Painter, creator of objects, and poet. Alberty studied at the University of Puerto Rico under Osiris Delgado, Cristóbal Ruiz, and Spanish painter Eugenio Fernández Granell. He was one of the founders of the student group Mirador Azul (1957), a group of artists and writers interested in Surrealism and avant-garde art and literature. This interest led him, in 1960, to denounce the artistic alienation of the University. In 1967 he moved to New York, where he founded the art gallery El Morro to exhibit Puerto Rican art. Alberty received a Guggenheim Fellowship that same year. He and Rafael Ferrer have been called the pioneers of the Surrealist and Dadaist movements in Puerto Rico. In 1973 he said about his work, “[My] task is only to be a gatherer of things, of fragments of things, either man-made or machine-made, and to bring them together to find new relationships.” His objects and “ready-mades”’s reflect this passion and combine humor and irony.