Rubén Rodrigo’s work brings into the present some of the practices developed by the New York School in the second half of the twentieth century. The soak staining painting of Helen Frankenthaler or Morris Louis is the starting point for Rodrigo’s investigations, in which the behaviour of paint on canvas fully embraces its aleatory nature. Fields of colour slide across the surface in a kind of action painting, while his layer upon layer technique also echoes the glazes of seventeenth century Baroque painters.

This distinctive combination of influences, together with surrealist strategies and certain concepts drawn from Japanese Shinto, gives rise to a body of work where controlled chance, mystery and a particular tactile quality tied to lightness converge. On his canvases Rodrigo explores the formal possibilities of colour in almost monochrome fields. “I want to achieve maximum purity through a unique staining process that the Japanese call sumi e, an ancestral monochrome technique that seeks to synthesise nature’s regular forms in a single brushstroke. I am interested in the pulse, the tension, the spirituality and the vitality of pictorial space.”

Rubén Rodrigo holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca, the city where, in 2019, his exhibition La Luz y la furia was held at DA2 Domus Artium, one of Spain’s leading contemporary art centres. His work is included in several major international private collections such as Colección H.E.F. and Colección Rucandio, among others.