Angel Rodríguez-Díaz

Rodríguez-Díaz with Antifaz: Forget the Alamo. Yellow Rose, one of his many self-portraits in which he wears a Mexican wrestling mask. The background was spray-painted through stenciled cloth. Ángel Rodríguez-Díaz (December 6, 1955March 31, 2023), also known as Angel Luis Rodríguez-Díaz, was an American artist from Puerto Rico. He began his career as an artist while a student in Puerto Rico, before moving to New York in 1978, and San Antonio in 1995. He is best known for his portraits and dramatized self-portraits, as well as his public art installations.

Biography Early life Angel Rodríguez-Díaz was born on December 6, 1955, in Santurce, a barrio of San Juan, Puerto Rico. During the first two years of his life, he spent a lot of time in the hospital due to a hernia. His father was born in a middle-class family near the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Ceiba, and his mother was born to a poor family in Santurce, but attended the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico thanks to money sent from relatives in the Bronx. When Rodriguez-Diaz was born, his parents were 19 and 18, respectively. Both parents were Roman Catholics, but his mother became a born again Pentecostal when she fell ill, and his father converted a few years later. Rodriguez-Diaz had to reconcile this with the fact he knew he was gay at a somewhat young age, which he called "something that was innate." One of the paintings in the exhibition, his first self-portrait, was sold, as were most of the works. The first review of his art, which appeared in El Mundo, was titled Ha Nacido Una Estella (A Star Has Been Born). Later during his college years, one of his paintings was displayed at the Museum of History, Anthropology and Art of the University of Puerto Rico. He studied printmaking, photography, and other arts. During this time, Rodriguez-Diaz cited Francisco Rodón as one of his inspirations. He was also deeply moved by the paintingTwo Figures by Francis Bacon, who was an important early influence.

Rodriguez-Diaz left Puerto Rico in 1978 to study at New York University (NYU). He felt isolated when he arrived in New York City because he only spoke Spanish. For the first time, he was able to observe how Puerto Rico was viewed by people in the United States. Rodriguez-Diaz had nowhere to stay until a friend introduced him to a lesbian couple, who let him live at their place for a few months. It took him over a year to be able to speak basic English. Meanwhile, he entered into his first gay relationship, which lasted around a year. He subsequently dated the writer Manuel Ramos Otero for around three years. Rodriguez-Diaz felt embraced by the local Puerto Rican community, and in New York he learned more about the Puerto Rico statehood movement. He later left NYU and obtained his MFA from Hunter College in 1982, which included the artist Robert Morris on the faculty. But this was the age of conceptual art, and his advisor told him that he did not want paintings. Rodríguez-Díaz studied paintings in books and in the New York museums. Because of the hostility to painting and to figural art, Rodríguez-Díaz considered himself to be a self-taught artist.

Rodríguez-Díaz had his first exhibition at the Hunter Gallery in New York City. Rodriguez-Diaz lived in New York City for 16 years, before moving to San Antonio where he focused not only on paintings, but public art installations as well.

In San Antonio, he and his partner Rolando Briseño purchased a former grocery store in the Beacon Hill neighborhood and converted it into a studio for Rodríguez-Díaz. They lived in a nearby Spanish-style building. During the late 1990s, most of his exhibitions, both solo and group, took place in San Antonio. Rodíguez-Díaz exhibited 12 paintings at the Southwest School of Art in 2005 in an exhibition called "Reflections in the Mirror. Tiphanie Yanique emphasized the baroque qualities of his work--even in his wrestler portraits--in a review of that show when it traveled to the Rudolph Projects | ArtScan Gallery in Houston in 2005. In 2006 he had a solo show called “Retratos… Between You and 'I'” at the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio. He also had a large one-person show at the Mexican Cultural Institute in San Antonio in 2004 called “Angel Rodriguez-Diaz, Retratos: 1990-2005.” In 2018 Rodriguez-Díaz was featured in a group exhibition at Artpace. In 2024, Rodríguez-Díaz was one of 12 deceased artists honored at the Mexic-Arte Museum's annual Día de los Muertos exhibition in Austin.

Paintings Two early New York period paintings reflect the artists Rodríguez-Díaz self-studied. Untitled [Dog and Suspended Body] (1982) is an homage to Francis Bacon that arguably comments on the Spanish Conquest of the Americas. Babilonia (1985), with its mirrored reflections, is structured on Édouard Manet's Le Bar aux Folies-Bergére (1882); stylistically, it references German Expressionism. Babilonia features quotes or references to Edvard Munch, Pieter Bruegel, Georges Seurat, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and John Heartfield. Rodríguez-Díaz's art historical references include Botticelli, Peter Paul Rubens, and Yemoja, the Yoruba goddess.

The Visitation and Red Interior, two harrowing paintings from 1988, are premonitions of the artist's HIV positive diagnosis. At the time he made these paintings, the artist feared that people who tested positive for HIV could be sent to concentration camps. The Protagonist of an Endless Story was purchased from the artist by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM). The painting was discussed in several reviews of the traveling exhibition "From the West."

El Chupacabra (1998), the only painting in the 1998-1999 Artpace installation in San Antonio, is a self-portrait of the artist (with a goat's skull on his head) evading U.S. helicopters. The Latino immigrant, it is argued, "is like the chupacabra [which first appeared in Puerto Rico]: simultaneously demon and victim, he is dispossessed and hunted--even in his native land."

In 1999, Rodríguez-Díaz painted another portrait of Cisneros called La Guadalupana, in which an apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe appears alongside her image. This conjunction references Cisneros' short story “Guadalupe the Sex Goddess.” The resemblance between the two figures has been interpreted as "a way of representing Guadalupe as a real woman, and conversely, Cisneros as a goddess." The Good Old Days (2005) is a monumental, oil-besmirched self-portrait that comments on ecological degradation and wealth disparity. The McNay Art Museum in San Antonio owns the print Stepping into the Light - Quinceañera (2008). In addition to SAAM, Rodríguez-Díaz's art is also in the collections of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, El Museo del Barrio in New York City, and El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Rodríguez-Díaz's Reunion (2008) was acquired by the city of San Antonio for the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in 2018.

Public Artworks In addition to paintings, almost all of which included portraits or self-portraits, Rodríguez-Díaz created a large mural, titled Birth of a City, for the San Antonio government's Development and Business Service Center. Completed in 2003, the artist overpainted a photographic collage of the city, which was scanned and printed on canvases. Rodriguez-Diaz also made a public artwork in his neighborhood. The Beacon, a 28-foot (8.5 m) cut-metal obelisk, is a sundial by day. At night, it projects light like a traditional Mexican luminaria. Luminarias, made of paper or tin, project candle light through stencil-cut piercings. The Beacon, installed in 2008, stands on a roundabout at the intersection of Blanco Road and Fulton Street. Artistic references in the cut-out patterns range from pre-Columbian motifs to Art Deco patterns.

Las Tres Marias, a large oil painting utilizing three local Latinas, was commissioned by the Cathedral of San Fernando. The University Health System Hospital commissioned a glass curtain called DNA: Mosaic of Our Humanity (2013). Rodríguez-Díaz also made four medium-sized murals and 57 small murals for the medical center, completed in 2014.

The San Antonio government commissioned The Crossroads of Enlightenment, also completed in 2014. It is the largest of his public art works. The two luminaria towers are made of steel, and allude to the smokestacks found at the nearby Alamo Quarry Market. The stone and concrete bases refer to the fact that the area had been a quarry. "The tower on the east side of Blanco bears the name 'Cementville,' a reference to the company village founded in 1908 where generations of impoverished Mexican American workers lived and died." The other tower, called “Los Angeles Heights,” refers to the present day neighborhood.

Death and legacy On March 31, 2023, Rodríguez-Díaz died in San Antonio at age 67, survived by his husband Briseño. The photographic quality of Rodríguez-Díaz's paintings and his propensity for self-portraiture were noted. Artist and professor Ricky Armendariz said "He was literally one of the most talented — technically and conceptually — artists that I've ever met, bar none...His work was hard hitting at times. His work was about identity, pain and loss." Curator Ruben C. Cordova said he created "uniquely original works by using self-portraiture as a vehicle for social criticism."

In a 2006 statement, the artist referred to portraiture as a way to "explore thoughts of identity, power, passion, and the everyday masks we all wear," which he used to "depict, re-imagine, and to celebrate our social and cultural diversity." The San Antonio Current said Rodriguez-Diaz "attracted international attention for his ability to combine technical proficiency with political and social commentary to create an instantly recognizable visual style."