Francisco Rodón’s present retrospective exhibition Rodón: Un nuevo Amanecer, is a splendid tour de force which again reminds us that he is one of the great Latin American portrait painters of the 20th century.
There are artists who force us to see men and women in different ways. This is the case with Rodón, an incisive poet of human nature, who by means of his imposing and inspiring portraits, has helped us understand better our Americas and this incredible century of ours.
For the last five decades, Rodón has been presenting to us revelations of our own faces. His dazzling compositions are doors to the fascinating, and at times frightful, depths that define us as individuals. His work, in general, can be read the same way as Pico Della Mirandola's Oration was read in the Renaissance—as an intelligent map of a complex historical moment.
This is a beautifully curated and necessary exhibition —as there is a whole generation of Puerto Ricans who had never seen a representative sample of Rodón's paintings together—that lets us see the Puerto Rican maestro as a lyricist (A Vincent van Gogh: Luz de luna, 1969-1990 and Hongos silvestres bajo la luna, 1967) and as one of the truly original portrait painters of modern times (Luis Muñoz Marín, 1974-1977, Borges o el Aleph, 1973-1980, Alicia Alonso, 1982-83 and Juan Rulfo o Pedro Páramo, 1981- 1983).
Exceptional artists are navigators who discover and invent new ports. Their goal is to touch us so that we learn how to see differently. Exceptional artists turn common things into new and important presences. Exceptional artists have the power of making the present timeless, making it last forever. They also have the power, through their art, to help us understand our time better, and ultimately they help us to get closer to ourselves and to know ourselves better so that we can give and love better and more.
On one level, Rodón is blessed with the rare gift of being able to make his own rules as a painter, and, at another, he is blessed with a generous and compassionate love for this Puerto Rico of ours, for what Jose Marti called Nuestra America, our Americas, this extraordinary joyful and painful carnival that has lasted 506 years.
This is the reason he can recreate and invent on his canvases, with enormous strength and beauty, the magic, the mystery, and ultimately the poetry that defines his transcendental objects of desire. This is the reason why each one of his compositions—especially his admirable portraits—becomes the ultimate definition of the model. This is the reason that his paintings—solemn and triumphant; epic but exquisitely humane—are always enormous and splendid poems that take us closer to life itself and the desired immortalities and resurrections.
And it happens that Rodón paints from the most intricate labyrinths of liberty and sensuality. His compositions are the product of his tremendous love for life, his passionate affairs with beauty, and his sincere respect for the dignity of men and women.
MANUEL ÁLVAREZ LEZAMA