Vicente Rojo

VICENTE ROJO (Barcelona, 1932- Mexico City, 2021).
"Mexico under the rain R42", 1985.
Collage and mixed media on paper.
Signed, dated and titled in the lower area.
Measurements: 44 x 44 cm; 76.5 x 76.5 cm (frame).
The pictorial series "Mexico under the rain", made mainly in the 1980s, is part of a plastic search that articulates memory, landscape and geometric structure without resorting to direct figuration. From a formal perspective, the work is organized through a grid of diagonal, parallel, irregular and sometimes broken lines, which form a visual dynamic associated with the phenomenon of rain. This oblique disposition not only introduces movement, but also breaks with the stability of the plane, generating an off-centered and saturated pictorial field. "Mexico under the rain" can be read as a reflection on identity: it integrates apparently disparate elements in the same visual field: ruin and fiesta, order and chaos, interiority and exteriority, articulated through pictorial rhythm. Thus, Rojo does not represent Mexico, but reconfigures it as a sensorial and temporal experience, where rain operates as a unifying agent.
Vicente Rojo was trained in Barcelona and arrived in Mexico in 1949, where he began his career and furthered his studies. From 1958 onwards he exhibited on numerous occasions both in Mexico and abroad, and in 1991 he was awarded the National Prize for the Arts and the Mexico Prize for Design. In 1980 the Museum of Modern Art of Paris invites him to reside for a year in the French capital; this stay will result in the work "Four series", which will be exhibited at the same museum. However, it was not until 1984 that he received the recognition he deserved in Spain, when the National Library held a retrospective exhibition of his work. Finally, in 1993 he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in our country. Vicente Rojo has held solo exhibitions all over the world, and is represented in the Museum of Modern Art, the National Institute of Fine Arts, the University Museum of the UNAM and the Rufino Tamayo Museum in Mexico, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bogota, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Würth Museum in Germany and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, among others.