Artists & Works

Roberto Juarez was living in Miami at the time he made this painting and the subject matter and lush colors reflect his Miami surroundings. This painting was also made at a time when the artist was exploring representational shapes. Now, Juarez works in a studio in New York City, and his large canvases reflect the new energy and life there, as well as move in a more abstract direction. The idea of rhythm and movement is a constant in all of Juarez's work.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS

Ken Johnson, New York Times, 9/19/97
" With a relaxed, expressionistic touch, he paints flowers, fruit, classical statuary and architectural ornament against flat, tropically hued backgrounds. The way these stray bits of memory hover in tropically hued spaces, it's as though we could see into the mind of someone half asleep basking in the Mediterranean sun. This floating imagery is grounded by the material dimension of Mr. Juarez's canvases."

Robert Kushner, Art in America, 11/93
"it is Juarez's color that takes us closest to elysium. He has identified an individual palette, at times rife with memories of late Dufy, but one which holds its own identity - grayed neutrals, with richly pastel blues, jade greens and strong lavenders. These colors are just saturated enough to seem like sun-bleached versions of full strength hues - the way colors look when you first take off dark glasses. Juarez allows the color to direct our attention over the entire surface of the paintings, both by linking repeated colors and by bridging with similarly charged colors. The result is a large-scale, interrupted movement which can either undermine or strengthen compositional form. This compositional use of color, discovered by the Fauves and honed by the Cubists, is surprisingly uncommon today, where now "color" usually means just lots of it. "