Arnaldo Roche Rabell
"Arnaldo Roche first came to my attention in 1988 when I received the announcement for his first show with the Struve Gallery in Chicago. The images, especially the self-portraits, were haunting and unlike anything I had seen before. Not long after, I was in Chicago and saw the work in person, first at Struve’s and then on a visit to the artist’s studio where I met Arnaldo for the first time. I recall that my first impression was that, with his soft voice and piercing blue eyes, he was as intense as his paintings.
"The art world began to take serious note of artists from Latin America starting roughly in 1987 with major, traveling museum surveys such as Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920-1987 and Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors, both of which included the then 22 year old Arnaldo Roche. At that point, the gallery already had long-standing relationships with Chilean born Roberto Matta and the Cuban born Luis Cruz Azaceta and I was just beginning to focus on what would become an important part of the gallery’s program: Caribbean and Latin American artists. Eventually that list would grow to include not only Roche but Carlos Alfonzo, Jose Bedia, Luis Benedit, Yoan Capote, Juan Francisco Elso, and Rosanna Palazyan.
"Arnaldo’s first show with us in New York, in 1990, garnered much critical attention along with his first museum sale, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The same was true for his second outing, in 1991, which followed on the heels of his one-man show at the Museum of Latin American Art, in Washington D.C. By this time, more museums had acquired his work, notably the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, El Museo del Barrio, and the Arkansas Art Center. Arnaldo would be the subject of a handful of museum surveys in the course of his short career, firmly establishing his position as the foremost contemporary artist living in Puerto Rico (he moved back permanently in 1997).
"Defiantly personal and deeply passionate, his paintings, in the words of Robert Loescher, his mentor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Could be very beautiful, rich, sensual, while the content can be pretty tough and often very painful.” Arnaldo‘s divided sense of cultural and personal identity was always at the fore in his work and reflected real inner torment that haunted – and propelled – him through his career. The Arnaldo I knew was driven by ambition as much as the need to exorcize his inner demons: his emotional vulnerability, his mixed-race heritage, his cultural identity as a Puerto Rican artist working on the mainland, his sexuality in a macho culture, his fury at the stigmatized relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. All this and more were on full display in canvas after canvas, but perhaps more notably, also present in his person. As he himself said about his work: “it’s dealing with my whole attitude toward life.”
"Despite their intensely personal foundation, Arnaldo’s work managed to project a surprising objectivity, with his paintings more of a bid for mutual understanding than polemics. Chicago: The Horse Is In is a statement of fact: the Puerto Rican population of that city in 1994, when it was painted, was already a force to be reckoned with. Likewise, Here You Can Only Die as a Man bluntly addresses the macho – and hypocritical – rules of maleness of Puerto Rican culture. And I Want to Die as a Negro lays claim to his (and many Puerto Ricans’) Benin roots, a heritage belied by Puerto Rico’s role in the slave trade and its secondary status in the United States. Arnaldo’s work speaks not only of his own struggles, but that of Puerto Rico as well, and his voice is as relevant today, post Maria, as it was twenty or thirty years ago."
Arnaldo Roche Rabell, at Frumkin/Adams Gallery, New York, May 1990.
Photo: Ken Showell.
Image courtesy George Adams Gallery archives.
"Arnaldo Roche first came to my attention in 1988 when I received the announcement for his first show with the Struve Gallery in Chicago. The images, especially the self-portraits, were haunting and unlike anything I had seen before. Not long after, I was in Chicago and saw the work in person, first at Struve’s and then on a visit to the artist’s studio where I met Arnaldo for the first time. I recall that my first impression was that, with his soft voice and intense blue eyes, he was as intense as his paintings. The art world began to take serious note of artists from Latin America starting roughly in 1987 with major, traveling museum surveys such as Art of the Fantastic: Latin America, 1920-1987 and Hispanic Art in the United States: Thirty Contemporary Painters and Sculptors, both of which included the then 22 year old Arnaldo Roche. At that point, the gallery already had long-standing relationships with Chilean born Roberto Matta and the Cuban born Luis Cruz Azaceta and I was just beginning to focus on what would become an important part of the gallery’s program: Caribbean and Latin American artists. Eventually that list would grow to include not only Roche but Carlos Alfonzo, Jose Bedia, Luis Benedit, Yoan Capote, Juan Francisco Elso, and Rosanna Palazyan.
"In any event, when Arnaldo visited me in New York to discuss representation, it was a no-brainer. Arnaldo’s first show with us in New York, in 1990, was an immediate smash, garnering much critical attention along with his first museum sale, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The same was true for his second outing, in 1991, which followed on the heels of his one-man show at the Museum of Latin American Art, in Washington D.C. By this time, more museums had acquired his work, notably the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, El Museo del Barrio, and the Arkansas Art Center. Arnaldo would be the subject of a handful of museums surveys in the course of his short career, firmly establishing his position as the foremost contemporary artist living in Puerto Rico (he moved back permanently in 1997).
"Defiantly personal and deeply passionate, his paintings, in the words of his mentor at the Art Institute of Chicago, Robert Loescher, “Could be very beautiful, rich, sensual, while the content can be pretty tough and often very painful.” Arnaldo‘s divided sense of cultural and personal identity was always at the fore in his work and reflected real inner torment that haunted – and propelled – him through his career. The Arnaldo I knew was driven by ambition as much as the need to exorcize his inner demons: his emotional vulnerability, his mixed-race identity, his cultural identity as a Puerto Rican artist working on the mainland, his sexuality in a macho culture, his fury at the stigmatized relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. All this and more were on full display in canvas after canvas, but perhaps more notably, also present in his person. As he himself said about his work: “it’s dealing with my whole attitude toward life.” Despite their intensely personal foundation, Arnaldo’s work managed to project a surprising objectivity, with his paintings more of a bid for mutual understanding than polemics. Chicago: The Horse Is In is a statement of fact: the Puerto Rican population of that city in 1994, when it was painted, was already a force to be reckoned with. Likewise, Here You Can Only Die as a Man bluntly addresses the macho – and hypocritical – rules of maleness of Puerto Rican culture. And I Want to Die as a Negro lays claim to his (and many Puerto Ricans’) Benin roots, a heritage belied by Puerto Rico’s role in the slave trade and its secondary status in the United States. Arnaldo’s work speaks not only of his own struggles, but that of Puerto Rico as well, and his voice is as relevant today, post Maria, as it was twenty or thirty years ago."
