Label Text
The artist created this large, gestural, explosive work by brushing, rubbing, and scraping thick layers of paint onto the canvas. While the energetic and active process of creating the painting--and its resulting physicality--is significant, the artist's subject matter fusing Christian iconography and Carribean/African-based spirituality is equally important. In this piece, Roche-Rabell depicts a mother figure riding a black horse in full gallop. The artist himself hangs onto her back with his face turned toward the viewer, staring intently. The female figure seems to be screaming with flowers and plant material flowing from her mouth as if speaking in a new language.
Source: DMAC News, Jan Feb Mar Apr 2022
Roche-Rabell is best known for his densely textured Neo-Expressionist paintings that comment on Puerto Rican national and cultural identity. This work is partly inspired by an iconic linocut by Carlos Raquel Rivera, titled Huracán del norte (Hurricane from the North). Rivera was one of the most prominent leaders of the Puerto Rican art world in the 1950s, and his print serves as a searing indictment of the United States’ occupation of the island. Roche-Rabell's picture, by contrast, considers movement in the opposite direction, exploring his experience of migrating from the island to the mainland United States to attend art school in Chicago. The painting includes a self-portrait, the black figure at the top of the composition, desperately hanging on to a female figure who sits astride a horse and emits a primal scream of ferns and foliage.
Exhibition HistoryArnaldo Roche Rabell, Museum of Modern Art, DF, México, February 23 - May 28, 1995
Arnaldo Roche Rabell: The Uncommon wealth, Anderson Gallery of ARt, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Richmond, Virginia, January 17-March 2, 1997
Museum of the American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, March 8 - April 20, 1997
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, September 12-November 9, 1997
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, December 5, 1997 = January 25, 1998
Roche-Rabell is best known for his densely textured Neo-Expressionist paintings that comment on Puerto Rican national and cultural identity. This work is partly inspired by an iconic linocut by Carlos Raquel Rivera, titled Huracán del norte (Hurricane from the North). Rivera was one of the most prominent leaders of the Puerto Rican art world in the 1950s, and his print serves as a searing indictment of the United States’ occupation of the island. Roche-Rabell's picture, by contrast, considers movement in the opposite direction, exploring his experience of migrating from the island to the mainland United States to attend art school in Chicago. The painting includes a self-portrait, the black figure at the top of the composition, desperately hanging on to a female figure who sits astride a horse and emits a primal scream of ferns and foliage.
Exhibition HistoryArnaldo Roche Rabell, Museum of Modern Art, DF, México, February 23 - May 28, 1995
Arnaldo Roche Rabell: The Uncommon wealth, Anderson Gallery of ARt, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Richmond, Virginia, January 17-March 2, 1997
Museum of the American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, March 8 - April 20, 1997
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, September 12-November 9, 1997
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, December 5, 1997 = January 25, 1998
DimensionsOverall: 84 × 120 in. (213.4 × 304.8 cm)
Accession Number 2021.22
Classificationspainting
SignedArnaldo Roche-Rabell (l,r paint)
Inscriptions1991 (l,r paint)
ProvenanceArtist. Humberto and Rosalia Ugobono, Puerto Rico. (Walter Otero Contemporary Art, San Juan); Des Moines Art Center [purchased from the previous, 2021]
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