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Gloria Rodriguez Calero

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Gloria Rodriguez Calero
Born
Arecibo, Puerto Rico
NationalityPuerto Rican
Known forpainting, collage and photography
Websitehttps://www.rodriguezcalero.com/

Rodriguez Calero (also known as RoCa) is a New York artist working as a painter, collagist, and photographer.[1]

Early life, education, and career

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Born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico in 1959, but raised in as a Roman Catholic in Brooklyn, New York. She studied under Lorenzo Homar at the Puerto Rican Artists at the Instituto de Cultura, Escuela de Artes Plasticas, and at the Arts Students League of New York with Leo Manso.[2]

Residencies and grants

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She held a National Endowment for the Arts residency at Taller Boricua with fellow artists Marcos Dimas, Gilberto Hernandez, Nestor Otero, Jose Rodriguez, Fernando Salicrup, Jorge Soto, and Manny Vega.[3]She has also had residencies at the Brandywine Workshop Center for the Visual Arts (PA, 1999), and Rutgers Center for Innovative Print & Paper (NJ, 2000).[4] She received the Brooklyn Arts & Culture Association Painting Award from the Brooklyn Museum and Belle Cramer Memorial Prize for Abstract Painting from the National Association of Women Artists. In 2008, she received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 2008.[5]

She has also received fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts.[6]

Honors and recognition

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In 2003 Calero was selected for with six other artists for national recognition as part of Liquitex 50th Anniversary.[7]

Her work has been featured in New Jersey Networks Public Television State of the Arts Series, “SIGN OF THE TIMES” in 2005[8] and 2008.[6]

Exhibitions

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In 2015, Rodriguez Calero was the first Nuyorican female artist to receive in depth survey of her work at El Museo del Barrio in New York which was guest curated by Alejandro Anreus entitled Gloria Rodriguez Calero: Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos.[9]Her work offers deeper social commentary about presentation and symbolism.[10] The exhibit included 29 large acrollage canvases, 19 smaller collages, 13 fotacrolés (altered photography) on canvas board, and 3 works of mixed media on paper produced over three decades.[11] The exhibition was be accompanied by a brochure and a scholarly catalogue.[12][13] The exhibit was reviewed and was given an honorable mention by Hyperallergic of the 20 best NYC exhibits.[14]

Style and technique

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Calero has developed a distinct original technique called "acrollage. She employs a variety of papers, colorful glazes of paint and acrylic mediums, appropriated prints which are layered on the canvas creating striking and highly graphic yet painterly compositions.[15] These were turned into plastic skins that often resemble monoprints.[16] Her smaller prints which she called “fotocroles,” employ a technique which combines photography, painting, collage, and chine-colle, as the name implies.[17]

There is a dichotomy in Calero’s work which bears qualities of both classical and contemporary elements. These include influences of surrealist collage, Catholic iconography, medieval religious painting, as well as hip-hop and street culture.[18] Her work offers a balance of the abstract and figurative, sacred and profane, the meditative and boldly graphic. Her work employs bold color and carefully arranged dynamic compositions while offering an empathetic gaze on her subject – subjects of the society she lives in. She embraces and celebrates ethnic groups, as well as LGBT community. Her work explores Afro-Hispanic Imagery and barrio life and demonstrates a belief that everyone, even the most marginalized have dignity and inner worth regardless of social class.[19] Figures in her works preach the gospel for today, reinterpreting community and providing content for the work that is ethnic, political and spiritual and thus at odds with much of the deconstructionist contemporary art of the day.[9]

In her collection Classical Collages, she revisits works by artists such as Artemnesia Gentileschi, Diego Velasquez, Francisco Goya, Francisco de Zurbaran, Edouard Manet, Michelangelo, Picasso, Balthus, and Puerto Rican artists Jose Campeche, and Ramon Frade.[20] In his catalog essay, Rodriguez Calero: The Submerged Voices, Ricardo Alvaro Perez asserts Calero's efforts to juxtapose images and related complexities creating a multidimensional a collective image hybridizing urban New York and Caribbean influences.[20]

Books and catalogs

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  • Rodriguez Calero: The Classical Collages, 2024[20]
  • Rodrigeuz Calero: Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos, El Museum del Barrio 2015[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b "RODRIGUEZ CALERO: Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos". El Museo del Barrio. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  2. ^ Magnifico, Lauren (2007). "Rodriguez Calero, interviewed by Lauren Magnifico, ILS 208, February 28, 2007". Center for Latino Studies, Notre Dame.
  3. ^ Staff, Clarion. "Honoring 40 Years of Centro: the "nu-YO-Rican" Print Project". PSC CUNY. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  4. ^ vínculo, Obtener. "Rodríguez Calero show at Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service". Tertulia Latina. Retrieved 2024-07-29.
  5. ^ "Rodriguez Calero - TertuliaLatinaNYC". cargocollective.com. Retrieved 2024-07-29.
  6. ^ a b "Rodriguez Calero". CentroPR. 2022-10-21. Retrieved 2024-07-29.
  7. ^ "An Artistic Conversation with Rodríguez Calero". Arte Realizzata. Retrieved 2024-09-07.
  8. ^ Edwards, Amber (2005). "Liquitex 50th Anniversary. State of the Arts". New Jersey Network Public Television & Radio.
  9. ^ a b Center for Puerto Rican Studies (2016). "Puerto Rican Voices: Season 3 Episode 4 (RoCa: Rodríguez Calero)". vimeo.
  10. ^ Ainley, Nathaniel (2015-07-22). "Collage Artist Combines Catholicism and Pop Culture". Vice. Retrieved 2024-09-07.
  11. ^ Meier, Allison (2015-08-07). "Saintly Collages of Everyday People". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2024-09-07.
  12. ^ "RODRIGUEZ CALERO: Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos". El Museo del Barrio. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  13. ^ Anreus, Alejandro (2015). "Rodriguez Calero Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Saints" (PDF).
  14. ^ Hyperallergic (2015-12-16). "Best of 2015: Our Top 20 NYC Art Shows". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  15. ^ "Collection: Gloria Rodríguez Calero Papers | Centro Library and Archives - ArchivesSpace". centroarchives.hunter.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2024-07-28.
  16. ^ CUNY TV (2015-07-23). Independent Sources: Artistic NYC. Retrieved 2024-07-29 – via YouTube.
  17. ^ Holmes, Jessica (2015-09-08). "RODRÍGUEZ CALERO Urban Martyrs and Latter Day Santos". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2024-08-01.
  18. ^ "re:tratos urbanos rodríguez calero" (PDF). NYU Wagner. Retrieved 30 July 2024.
  19. ^ Veneciano, Jorge Daniel (2015). Rodriguez Calero: Urban Martyrs + Latter Day Saints [Martires urbanos y santos de nuestros dias] (in English and Spanish). New York: El Museo del Barrio. ISBN 978-1-882454-82-2.
  20. ^ a b c Valdez, Gustavo, ed. (2024). Rodriguez Calero: The Classical Collages. Paris: Ars Atelier City, ORELAC studios, ZV Lunaticas. ISBN 978-2-9589054-1-5.
  21. ^ I·den·ti·ty: A group exhibition highlighting global and cultural Identity through art. Merion Station, PA: St Joseph's Universitiy. 2022. pp. 5–6.
  22. ^ Crescioni-sAntoni, Franki (2013). RazA con "A". New York NY: Gallery at NYU Wagner.
  23. ^ Rosati, Lauren; Staniszewski, Mary Anne (2013). Exit Art, Alternative Histories New York Art Spaces 1960 to 2010. Exit Art and The MIT Press. pp. 126–127.
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