ArtNotes No. 22, December 3, 2008

The visual metaphors, optical games, and a puzzled gaze upon domestic interiors, those shaped landscapes that surround our everyday lives, are constants in the paintings of Rosendo Álvarez Cortés (Madrid, 1961), currently on display at the Madrid gallery Metta.

Alongside these elements, there are references to icons of the 16th and 17th-century painting, to the works of Whistler, Malevich, or Chirico. In the pieces "Ruido" (I, II, and III) and the series "Habitación de coleccionista" ("Collector's Room"), the 'painting' within the 'painting' is present, a line that has inhabited the history of art since the Dutch masters of the 17th century, Velázquez, De Chirico, and Magritte.

His compositions are marked by geometry, shaping the reading of the pictorial image. "Perhaps everything has a logic. That a series of disordered events form a perfect and compact structure like geometry. Like the straight line formed by ants in the sand, although none of them separately seems to know clearly where it's going," comments the artist himself.

"Art constructs spaces as a kind of simulation, a cave of shadows where what is seen and what is thought embraces in form. I have questioned the way of knowing and recognizing the known. An analysis of doubt about whether our knowledge is discursive or a disordered amalgam. If it were the former, it would be orderly thought, united by a guiding thread. If it were the latter, it would be a mixture of fragmented visions, concepts, and mixed thoughts. All condition our discourse, but the latter even more conditions our subjectivity. We live in the paradox of being surrounded by an immense amount of data and knowledge that bombard us incessantly with opinions, many, the majority, antagonistic. As if truth, even empirical truth, had been lost in a cornfield, while hundreds of cicadas sing with their choirs to drive us mad," comments the artist in the presentation of this exhibition.

Jerez Diary. May 30, 2004

Interesting and filled with exciting pictorial sense is the exhibition presented to us by Carmen de la Calle in her gallery in Jerez - in the one in Madrid, it is the painting of José Gallego that occupies the space, offering its many testimonies of accomplished artistry. Rosendo Álvarez is a painter from Madrid, with extensive exhibition experience - especially abroad - who places us in the fascinating realms of modern figuration, from which he extracts attractive episodes of a reality full of arguments and references.

The work of Rosendo Álvarez maintains the most significant schemes that have dignified the most advanced artistic creation. In his work, we find wise records of a representation that loses its most absolute subjects to position itself in conceptual realms where parallel situations of very disparate nature come into play. Through the scenes of the painter from Madrid, which are nothing but precise compositional structures wisely distributed to accommodate all kinds of circumstances, a varied array of aesthetic possibilities always aimed at a perfectly conditioned visual development unfolds. His everyday settings offer us, at first glance, a spectacular episode of singular creative force where the elements unravel a clear narrative manifestation. However, behind the striking scenic formation, there is a complicit play of intentions, with reality losing its usual contours to offer us an extremely subtle panorama where everything is susceptible to an immediate interpretation.

For Rosendo Álvarez, the apparently concrete has become narrow; he has the need to encompass other ways and means. The image detracts prominence from the figure, developing an unstable significant position. His works offer us an exercise in evocation, a play with the unexpected, a juxtaposition of contrary elements where the classical merges with the most familiar, it is the absolute heritage of evocation, suggestion, the recreation of a universe that brings playful references, even with certain inclinations towards a particular kitsch aesthetic, which presents the weight of the culture endowed with special artistic identity. (The emphasis is mine). In his happy compositional spaces, the image winks complicitly at a representation widely questioned. The elements of his spacious and well-equipped rooms - furniture, books, those works of art that combine the testimonies of modernity with a particular homage to past artistic references, the subtle and veiled presence of the human - are nothing but structural resources for the visual narrative of a concept, the happy conforming architecture of an idea, from which the author subtracts all its complexity to leave it in a mere metaphysical state.

The painting of Rosendo Álvarez creates tremendous unease, making us participants in a complex conceptual realm where the closest offers a new expectant identity, positioning itself in states where the everyday adopts a new physiognomy as a product of a systematic analysis of the most immediate. Tremendously particular situations appear, in which there underlies, almost always, states of certain surrealism, experiences extracted from dreamlike territories or landscapes full of strong metaphysical charge, as well as positions tangential to an everydayness that shows its most striking features.

When many are busy seeking absurd identities in the absolute, Rosendo Álvarez places us in the schemes of a modern figuration where everything is susceptible to manifesting multiple interpretations. Through his canvases pass complicit glances, the true dream of the impossible, the right measure of a beautifully interpreted doubt.

ARTICLE OF: El Punto de las artes. February 28th, 2004

There are two or three Spanish painters, as far as I know, who have settled in the Netherlands and have been developing their work in that country, creating and exhibiting, gaining recognition there, but for some reason, here they are somewhat marginalized or, in any case, encounter excessive difficulties in showing their work in their own land, which brings them prestige abroad: such is the case of Miguel Ybañez and, more pronouncedly, Rosendo Álvarez.

The first exhibition I saw of R. Álvarez was in 1989, Galería Término, when, over a diluted and transparent abstraction, he painted mysterious cartographies of the sky and the earth, creating a sort of maps that hid and revealed the secrets of painting.

Before settling in the Netherlands, -we must note a cherished vocation for being a foreigner, that mythical accent that Saint-John Perse highlights in man-, he held his first solo show in Berlin and the next two in London, so his direction was clear.

Rosendo Álvarez, born in Madrid in 1961, with a degree in Philosophy and Letters from UCM, studied painting in Bilbao and Madrid, later expanding his knowledge in Germany and the United Kingdom. At the beginning of the nineties, he moved to the Netherlands, where he was awarded a scholarship, just like he would be for the Academy of Rome, and had his first Dutch solo show in 1991, since then having held seven, one of them in Madrid, Afinsa 1996, making the present exhibition the thirteenth of his solo shows.

His language, which he diligently experimented with, became clarified around a figurative style of interiors, imbued with loneliness, with a certain Italian influence in forms and colors and something of metaphysical painting that is not Chirico-esque.

The painter himself has written a brief text to accompany his paintings, in which R. Álvarez says: "The human being is capable of justifying everything: all brutality, neglect, isolation, vileness... He is ingenious and builds his private and perfect worlds in his marvelous palaces. So that no one passes, to isolate himself and to create a world, a reality to his liking... but it overwhelms him and becomes uninhabitable. In summary, the paintings are interiors where these questions are asked and developed."

Step by step, Rosendo Álvarez has been refining his project, stylizing his hand, blending his feelings and thoughts, to create environments, voids, and spaces with a life of their own, although they may seem uninhabited, because beyond the physicality they represent, there is a presence that stimulates, attracts, incites thought, and through these interior paintings, other interiors circulate and interact.

It is a very contemporary work, but also with a melancholy that comes from the past. A serious work that speaks, without worrying about being fashionable, of ways of living and existing for man, which is what endures. A painting done calmly, with tranquility, with a rising horizontality, because it has density and tension, balance and history, it smells of existence, with all its vicissitudes, that indefinable scent left by the passage of losers, as Charles Bukowski pointed out, from the pensions he sang madrigals to, with a blues sound.

(Schröder Galerie/Ateliers: Anna PaulownaStraat 54 A.-2518 BG Den Haag (NL); until April 22nd)

DiseñArt nº 06. 2002

HOLLAND HAS BEEN THE LAUNCH PLATFORM FOR THE PAINTING WORK OF THIS ARTIST. IN SPAIN, HE HAS ALREADY ACHIEVED IMPORTANT SUCCESSES, PLACING US IN A MODERN FIGURATION THAT ALLOWS FOR MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS.

TEXT: ROCÍO RUIZ-JARABO / PHOTOS: MANUEL BLANCO, KINA MARULL

Rosendo Álvarez welcomed us into his painting studio in Madrid. It's his artist's stage where he materializes his pictorial ideas into surprising, colorful compositions of singular creative force.

Rocío: You always dwell in double entendres, don't you? Well, more than in doubles and folds, in hidden meanings, right?

Rosendo: Well yes, the signifier and the signified. What is physically there and the group it belongs to, right? I mean with the signifier: the group of cars "is a car," but then the meaning of each car is different, and the relationship between the two produces very changing definitions: a car can be a caravan.

Rocío: It could also be a living room...

Rosendo: Yes, it could also be a living room... Even a place to sleep... I don't know, they set up a flea market here nearby. They open the car, and it turns into a shop! A showcase of shoes! From slippers to tall clothes!

Rocío: Or a dressing room!

Rosendo: Yes.

Rocío: This is also a bit about the condition of objects, right? Objects introduce a reality that gives character to space. The architectural space provides the use, even the character of that use, and what is installed in it gives the character of how it's lived, what use is made of "that use." A context is created around and from the object; it's not the other way around.

Rosendo: Of course, of course, it's not the other way around. That's why we say "let's dress the rooms," and of course, the architect creates a space, but what is space? It's not an atmosphere; the architect doesn't create the atmosphere of space, really. Well, how a space is can have a big influence; if the room has a 2x2 m window, it obviously has an impact, but even then, the objects you place are... It's the part that modifies that empty space, fills it, animates it.

Rocío: It introduces time into space, right? And in your work? What interests you more, the space or the objects?

Rosendo: Well, both things. I'm interested in the objects having a space where their volume is visible, and sometimes I don't want any volume at all, so it all depends on what interests me at that particular moment. Sometimes there's no spatial reference, it's provided by the object itself. It's also an idea of solitude, but also of courage. One is alone. But when one is alone, it doesn't just refer to oneself, but to oneself with attributes that others don't have. You have three chairs, exactly the same except for color. The impression is totally different. A new definition is created in the viewer. Introducing differences halfway between two signifiers opens the door, allows you to speculate things. A chair doesn't have to be a chair precisely; it can be whatever you think or mean. It's allowed. A different way of thinking about the object itself.

Rocío: Yes, instead of focusing creativity on creating new forms for already known objects, you represent them in the most known form and aim at recognizing new things in that familiar object, right? You aim more at the creative origin than at the thousand points in which it's represented, right?

Rosendo: Exactly!

Rocío: You highlight the multiple readings in the object itself, rather than emphasizing the multiple forms in which an object can be given. 

Rosendo: Yes, the multiplicity of that, it's true!

Rocío: You make a very intentional use of formal language, right? A superlative relationship between what the object represents by the definition of its name, and what it evokes, beyond the limit of its name, right? There should be a word for the function, a word for the mental utility, and a word for the emotional possibility. Two words in one object. Well, perhaps that's the function that an adjective fulfills, right? It qualifies and qualifies in its adherence to the name.

Rosendo: It's always about relationships, for example, in the series of the collector's rooms, there are historical and aesthetic relationships. The idea of possession is there in the middle... it's curious.

Rocío: There can be possession, and there can also be an impulse to investigate, about the thousand ways to see that suggestive object, each day or each time differently, by your gaze interacting with it. 

Rosendo: Collectors are marvelous because they know how to see beyond the first impression. Or the opposite, the first impression is so overwhelming that you want to keep it fresh in your memory, to remember that first impression.

Rocío: What evolution has your work followed?

Rosendo: I started with an interest in the architectural, then I went through some transparencies, exploring the permeability of the figurative, almost disappearing into the color and texture of the abstract, of a material, or a background...

Rocío: Like fossils, material at intersections... Veiled figures, objects and walls impregnated with the presence in which they overlap.

Rosendo: Yes... then I became more interested in the figurative. This thing with shadows and chairs... It's another double language. Of the fixed and the mobile. The same object produces different things without moving.

Rocío: It also seems that you paint the relationship between absences, right? It seems like a dialogue between the situation of each chair.

Rosendo: I paint what remains of something, the trace of an action. The two chairs symbolize two worlds, the dialogue between two different worldviews... It's like life itself. They are realities, they are multiple but they are in the same reality. These blocked hallways, and rooms... This belongs to a series on incomunicado, clearly. A hallway is a communication path. By breaking it with a barricade, communication is broken, and it also speaks of fragility. There are relationships where you can go, enter, or not. The heart is like a Chinese teapot, the human heart is that fragile, and human relationships too. They encompass a lot, but suddenly they can break, and clack!

Rocío: Yes, and then you can glue the pieces back together, and with them, you have the same relationship as before, but with imperfect pieces, the assumed imperfection, recomposed as a form to handle, to improve upon. And the books, so present in your series "Apparent Stability"?

Rosendo: The books. Well, because it's a very symbolic element. So far they have been conveying the idea of cultural tradition. Not anymore, but until now, right? That's why in the paintings of balances... It's a blocked hallway, the rooms are also blocked in some. A room without communication is more personalized, right? It's like that because someone wants to be incommunicado, to block themselves. A hallway is a depersonalized obstruction, a room isn't. Things change, and balance must be maintained with the changes.

Rocío: It's very interesting to see how your paintings not only relate to the viewer but also to each other, right? That, indeed, is proof that they have life, they have a life of their own. This ruler you have here... it's from the Renaissance..., that Flemish soul you are... reborn in?

Rosendo: Yes, that ruler is beautiful. I would sign it as a work, really.

Rocío: Yes, as Duchamp said, the work is in the eye that finds it, even if it's already made..., as is the case with this piece, right? But well, how nice to recognize that as a work, no less a work than the one that passes through one's hands, and yet not do away with it, be dedicated, devoting oneself to the work through the use of technique, color, the investigation of its possibilities... to make it into a Work, right? I find it very beautiful... I mean, many artists rely on this cry, "in the eye lies the art," and then they start producing assemblage works, patchworks of objects that are already works in themselves, objects, and they sign them.., and that ends up being a NO to technique and to the careful investigation of the components of each color, of the chemical matter that each color contains, and its reaction to what is painted... And this is what I believe, it can't be. 

Rosendo: Yeah. Well, to me, I also think it's great, right? To devote yourself to finding, and finding.., don't you think?

Rocío: Yes, if it's not a devaluative criticism, no, it's that I think it's necessary to underline because I think it's great, but less great than doing that and this, using technique, knowing color at the same time.

Rosendo: Ah Ha! Ha! Well, let's start pulling them out. This one is quite old. "Apparent Stability" is the stack of books, referring to what history is, to the compendium of knowledge.

Rocío: Yes, to the chronology. It's a reference to the use and employment. What you do with the books.

Rosendo: So that's why time is also associated through furniture. They couldn't be today's furniture necessarily; they must be furniture that takes you out of time.

Rocío: Yes, you use elements that are already well assumed, to not divert the gaze, right? And the colors...? This Flemish heritage you have? You don't give light in your paintings, the light emanates from the colors themselves, and yet, even without light, there are shadows in your paintings, right? The colors give the forms, right? Do you love forms?

Rosendo: I love colors. Colors give the uniqueness of each object. The same object is completely different in one color than in another. Colors carry history, they carry importance. Aesthetically, it wouldn't work any other way. The color comes from Holland, yes, from the time I was there on a scholarship. For an object to have referential value, it must be accompanied by a unique sense, right? If you see these chairs and it seems to you that they have served a purpose, it's because they refer to the function they have. They can immediately allude to an interrupted function. You can perceive an absence, and to perceive an absence, you have to know that someone could have been there. And that's the point. And this other one is about blacks.

Rocío: Are we talking about how you title the works? Is it pure poetry? Magritte taken to words?

Rosendo: Yes... well, precisely, this series is called "Why are our homes so beautiful?” Well, this painting is a room with a black person that I took from the newspaper, from a massacre of tribes, in Africa. It's actually about our relationship with the news, with things: They live with us, but how do they live with us? By ignoring it! We are capable of watching the news, or in documentaries, awful things, but it's outside of our lives, when it's actually embedded! That's why I paint them.

Rocío: Yes, because the painting unites them, stamps them in the same picture, like it or not, it doesn't seek aesthetic harmony, but to jumble the forms of life, in the same picture, which in this order of priorities, gives the harmonious beauty.

Rosendo: Of course, to connect them... that's what it's about. We are really seeing a dead woman on TV, or in a painting in the same room, in the same space, and we extract it from our conceptual framework of what that space is, and voilà! Let's have dinner with the flowers!

Rocío: You always explain your paintings with some aspect in the form of a cryptogram, some obvious, dissonant element that grabs attention.

Rosendo: Yes, there are also different times, elements belonging to different centuries, and they are all there, in the same space! And they are all creating not only a circumstance but a reflection. Time is talked about a lot.

Rocío: And these differences in technique that you use? Do they also have to do with these multi-times in a single space?

Rosendo: Yes, it brings confusion, an awakening, and then a lot of information.

Rocío: And the state of confinement in which the paintings of the series "Collector's Rooms" are presented? This situation of confusing -in the term house- protection with fortification, right? When the best protection is not being afraid. This underscore of time in the spaces you paint, of "paused moments," opens up a space in the observer's gaze, which is actually time, right? It seems like you paint the moment that has been left as a residue of an action, a residual moment... an atmosphere, what has remained... You paint the consequence in a time sequence, in which it has not yet become a cause. That space of time in which all causes are harbored, are possible and contained, in potential. That space of time in which the consequence of a previous cause is not yet a cause in itself, it has not yet turned into a cause, it is still a consequence, and yet in that space of time, one feels the possibility that this consequence has to, in turn, be a thousand causes.

Rosendo: Yes, what you're saying now is the Law in the key of F, right?

Rocío: Well yes, you paint the sustained, expectant step, within the Octave.

ARTICLE OF: Centrepo de la France. Sunday, May 17, 1998

FIGURATIVE PAINTINGS AT "LA POMMERIE"

The Spanish painter Rosendo Álvarez exhibits his paintings in the village of "La Pommerie," in the municipality of Saint-Setiers, until May 24th. The beauty of the colors and the precision of the strokes will undoubtedly captivate lovers of figurative art.

One painter succeeds another. After the Englishman Roy Amiss, it is the turn of the Spanish artist Rosendo Álvarez, 37 years old, to exhibit his paintings in the village of "La Pommerie," in the commune of Saint-Setiers.

A dozen works have been installed in the two barns of Hub Nollen, leader of the cultural association "Appel-boom." They will be on display until Sunday, May 24th, every day from 2 to 6 pm. Afterward, the artist will travel to Nice, where he will participate in an international fair for three days.

ATTENTION TO DETAIL

It is not really a coincidence that Rosendo Álvarez has come to spend a few days in Haute Corrèze. A few years ago, he met Hub Nollen at an artists' meeting in The Hague, Netherlands.

It is worth seeing the paintings of the Spanish artist. His contemporary work as we can imagine it today. His figurative art clearly prevails over abstract art.

All of his works are marked by attention to detail. The figures are painted with great attention to detail, while the objects appear more real than life itself. Rosendo Álvarez wields the power of color, from vivid red to dark brown, passing through sky blue.

MEETING WITH THE ARTIST

In the vast majority of the works, we find the themes that are dear to him: history, particularly from the Renaissance period, the clash of cultures with a painting depicting a black slave confronted with the Western world, and the interiors of houses.

"It is true that I like to paint everything that is in a house," he says. "For me, painting is a way to express my opinion on the relationships that people have." According to Hub Nollen, the work of the Spanish painter is easily accessible to the general public, although there are some messages to decipher.

"We are always there when people come to visit the exhibition," says the president of Appelboom. "Therefore, together with the artist, I can provide explanations to those interested. What I want above all is to encourage exchanges."

On Saturday, May 23rd, there will be a meeting with the Spanish painter, starting at 8:30 pm, in the village of "La Pommerie." Admission is free. On the other hand, those who wish to see the exhibition will need to pay the sum of ... 10 F. A small fee, considering the quality of Rosendo Álvarez's work.

El punto de las artes. November 1997

THE HAGUE

Rosendo Álvarez: A New Figurative Look

There is a certain nostalgia, between acidic and Hopperesque, of the Renaissance, of the initial Renaissance flavors; a sort of look back, to move forward; a kind of eternal return to the sources, to drink the freshly sprung water, from centuries-old fountains.

When I encountered R.A.'s painting for the first time, back in 1988 and, a year later, his fourth solo exhibition at Galería Término, seemingly in abstraction but not excluding, I was already under the Renaissance spell of architectures, planes, and concepts; in textures and transparencies, hiding/revealing elements that would lead to a clear figuration.

In 1996, at Afinsa-Almirante, we could see a set of paintings, in the same perspective as those now shown in The Hague, with a strong will to make man coexist, in his peculiarity, with his domestic space, with the place where he develops the different interactions, obsessions, and incidents of his presence.

Interiors, with a metaphysical vocation of reality; concerned figuration, nudes, in environments that lead us from figure to thought, with painting as a guide to man's great concerns, always establishing a rupture, a break, as noted by the Dutch historian Roos van Put in the exhibition catalog.

Rosendo Álvarez, Madrid 1961, Bachelor of Philosophy and Letters, History branch, studied art in Bilbao and Madrid. He held his first solo exhibition in 1987 in Berlin, and in 1989, he won the First Prize for Young Creators from the City of Madrid.

As a fellow in Holland and Rome, he has participated in numerous collective exhibitions, in international fairs such as ARCO, and in twelve solo exhibitions in London, Miengo, Valkenswaard, Madrid, The Hague, and Amsterdam. His work is part of public and private collections, such as: Colc. Testimoni de La Caixa, Colc. Schröder, Royal Academy of San Fernando Museum, or Miengo Municipal Collection.

The relationship between man and his space, reflection on living and inhabiting, the realm of dependency, the atmosphere in which life unfolds, loneliness and anguish, silence and the search for the fundamental, are some of the elements that make up this new look at reality. It materializes with a clean execution and a technique that combines acrylic, conte pencil, and inks.

A climate for manifestation and evidence, and a reiterated questioning of the act of painting and representing, from the evocation of painting within painting, achieving pieces of excellent presence, more ambitious, confident, and better resolved than those presented in his last exhibition in Madrid.

ARTICLE OF: Haagsche Courant. October 25, 1996

A person lives in two worlds of experience: the world of their thoughts and the world informed by events. In the work of the Spanish artist Rosendo Álvarez, this dichotomy is the source of his visual creations. He calls the first world "time" and the second "history". Both are inextricably linked. Álvarez also uses the term "shadows" literally: "shadows". For Álvarez, the "shadows" refer to "supposed personal experiences". A supposed personal experience is, for example, when one is startled in their thoughts by a movement in the corner of the eye that they believe they have seen. You think you saw something, but you didn't really see it, and that's why it's a "supposed personal experience". However, these moments and associations are interpreted. In Álvarez's work, the "shadows" of the dead bear ideas. Furthermore, the relationship between the past and the present plays an important role in his paintings. There is also an unbreakable connection between the two.

The principles mentioned lead Álvarez to create acrylic paintings that are accessible and aesthetic at first glance. His imagery is inspired by the artistic heritage of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The balanced compositions and the restraint of colors in the background, as seen in the work of Perugino in the early Renaissance, are particularly evident in Álvarez's paintings. The figures that Álvarez draws with sober black lines bear a strong resemblance to the great masters such as Raphael and Michelangelo. He cites art history and adds his contemporary philosophical principles. The way he presents the paintings also contains a historical-artistic reference. His canvases are stapled directly to the wall, suggesting a relationship with frescoes. With his way of painting, he has approached the weathering of these frescoes: his figures seem to disappear slowly but inexorably. The 'Shadows' are thus shown literally by Álvarez, in addition to the philosophical starting point.

Álvarez's paintings are carriers of ideas that indicate an unfathomable depth. You see what you see: a historical language of art, carefully chosen color schemes, and (parts of) human figures.

However, at the same time, another invisible world looms, in which he manages to make visible the complexity of the human mind. On the other hand, he applies the collective ideas of art history ("history") and reinterprets existing data from his world of personal thought ("time").(RvP)

ARTICLE OF: Haagsche Courant. May 27, 1994

SCHRÖDER GALLERY

Anna Paulownastraat 56ª, The Hague: Rosendo Álvarez, paintings and drawings. Wed-Sun 13:00-17:30, until June 12.

A visit to "Au clair de la lune" is also a good opportunity to stop by Schröder, the gallery that puts so much idealism into its dealings with young and promising national and foreign artists, among other things, offering them temporary studio space. These days, Schröder is exhibiting a large retrospective of drawings and paintings by the Madrid-based painter Rosendo Álvarez, discovered at the ARCO art fair.

Álvarez is known as an intelligent, if not virtuoso, painter, as evidenced by two paintings of large red flowers and human figures against a midnight blue background; canvases that otherwise recall the richness of woven tapestries. Álvarez deliberately evokes more memories, in fact. He often refers to the art of painting and drawing from the Italian Renaissance and Baroque; Raphael is one of his favorites.

In combination with fragments of more contemporary images (and sometimes also with some text), a work emerges that impresses with its intelligent technique but does not present itself as a unity. Indeed, his solo exhibition can sometimes be considered an exhibition of two, perhaps three, artists. The true Álvarez has not yet emerged, at least he is still young.

---- (The following content is unrelated to Rosendo's work)---

The Brabant origin of the Schröder Gallery, which once began in Valkeswaard, can still be savored in its contribution to the tenth anniversary of the airline Dynamic Airlines. For two weekends (May 28-29 and June 4-5), nine artists selected by Schröder will present their projects and installations at the hangar of "Vliegveld Welschap" (Luchthavenweg 43, Eindhoven). The theme is "Flying in Freedom." The response from the Chinese artist Jianren Zhao, and also the title of his work, is "Unable to Fly." In addition to these presentations, there will be performances by musicians and cabaret artists in the afternoon and evening.

ARTICLE OF: PULCHRI. May 22, 1994

Rosendo Álvarez

Rosendo (1961) studied Philosophy and Literature, as well as painting, in Bilbao and Madrid.

The Schröder Foundation became acquainted with the artist's work in 1990 at the ARCO in Madrid. Rosendo was one of the youngest artists there and had been awarded the first prize for young artists in the city of Madrid a few months earlier.

His works, generally large in size, depict forms based on the aesthetics of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque in particular.

The most striking elements of Rosendo's works are the memories and references to solidarity.

Rosendo's main aim is, as he puts it, to "modernize or adapt an inherited artistic language. It's an attempt to help blur the confrontation between classical and modern art."

He once formulated his ideas about transitoriness and historical connection as follows:

"Works of art, books, and ideas are like molds of organic life forms, whose traces are marked by all kinds of circumstances, such as pollution, residual tarnish, and the formation of patinas or their equivalents. Sometimes we experience these tarnishes as purifications that actually contribute to their beauty."

It is the need to reinterpret images (ideas) as they have been transmitted, from a contemporary point of view, that for Rosendo constitutes the basis of our current cultural evolution.

ARTICLE OF: Haagsche Courant. February 12, 1993

Tasteful

Kadans

Maziestraat 13, The Hague: Rosendo Álvarez; paintings and objects. Open: Tue-Sat 12:00-17:30. Until February 28.

Even before the opening, two paintings by Rosendo Álvarez were sold at the Kadans Gallery. Therefore, it is understandable that Hermance Schaepman was delighted. After all, it confirmed her conviction that she had made the right decision in showcasing this young Spanish artist.

However, sales are not an indicator of the final quality of an artwork. Nevertheless, it is understandable that Álvarez sells. His paintings and objects are tasteful arrangements of quotes from the Italian Renaissance, set in frames decorated with flowers that seem to have been taken from the villas of Pompeii. In his choice of materials, he spares no gold paint, and the soft, matte inclination of the varnish gives his canvases the luxury of oriental screens. Everything looks very beautiful, indeed, but is it more than clever decoration?

ARTICLE OF: Haagsche Courant. April 6, 1991

INDIVIDUALISM AND SELFISHNESS

The first encounter with the new paintings of Madrid-born artist Rosendo Álvarez is tough. About three years ago, this Spanish artist painted scenes that seemed taken from real life. Upon closer inspection, the viewer discovered the refinement of the painting: the depicted scene subtly referred to a preceding event. For example, a toppled chair in a carefully directed painting could have spoken of someone who had just left the room in a panic, and the facial expression of the child hidden under the table could have spoken to why they were hiding there. In another work, a woman anxiously gazed at a closed door, in front of which there were several stacked pieces of furniture. In his early works, Álvarez showed himself as a painter of sensibly disturbed atmospheres, referring to universal moods such as loneliness or ultimate fear.

In his new series of paintings, man plays a less prominent role; he hardly appears anymore, yet Álvarez still references him.

INTERIORS

Rosendo Álvarez explicitly focuses on interiors, where, as usual, things are not quite right; books are not neatly arranged on the shelf but are stacked on top of each other, below and above, in such a way that it seems like a bomb has exploded. When the interior seems normal - without toppled chairs, for example - all the chairs and tables are so neatly arranged, and all the painted pictures hang so perfectly on the wall, that the neatness itself makes one doubt what one is seeing. There must be something more here. And there is. Rosendo Álvarez himself remarks about his new art: "Man is capable of justifying everything; all brutality, neglect, isolation, and pettiness. He is ingenious and constructs around himself a small perfect world in beautiful palaces (...). To isolate oneself and create a world, a reality of one's own, according to one's own rules (...)."

With this, Álvarez makes a statement about the far-reaching individualism of modern man and about the rampant - universal - selfishness. With this, he departs from the path he took three years ago. At that time, he created an image with an alienating element, although it was based on everyday reality. But the atmosphere was not cold, rather unsettling. Now the artist composes cold, hard objects with the intention to impact. What remains is the icy cold: the painted interior of the tough modern man, who has built a small perfect world around himself to which nothing and no one can be added.

The view of a Spanish, hot-blooded man of this cold world is remarkable.

New paintings by Spanish artist Rosendo Alvarez. Galería/Atelier Schoröder, Anna Paulownastraat 54a, The Hague. Wednesday to Sunday 13-18 hours and by appointment. Until April 22nd.

ARTICLE OF: Dagblad voor Noord-Limburg. April 25, 1991

Graffiti artists have struck in the center of Roermond. Striking drawings on the walls, slogans on the streets, and paint cans in the trees. What stands out is that mainly feet have been painted. It seems strange that instead of the usual genre of "I was here" and "Whoever reads this is crazy," they have drawn inspiration from literary works. And what really doesn't fit is that the police are allowing it.

The painters are not really graffiti artists, but participants in an artistic route through Roermond called Promenart. Their painted feet and colorful literary phrases serve as signs on this art route that passes through the city's monumental buildings, where fifteen young artists from different countries exhibit their works.

The walk begins in the Carthusian Park on Voogdijstraat Street. Once the starting point is found, the path can be easily followed by following the footprints on the street.

The former Renaissance garden of the Carthusian Park has been transformed into something special thanks to the artists Lucas Pellens and Stefan Custers. The fountain is wrapped in a nest of branches, as if a bird had gotten confused in the tree. And the scattered stones in the grass are not gray, but yellow, blue, and red.

From the park, the route leads to the so-called "House of Christoffel" on Lindanusstraat Street, built in the second half of the 17th century. There, too, Lucas Pellens is busy...

Through a parking lot where signs with literary texts hang, the walker arrives at Jesuïtenstraat Street. Above the entrance to that street is the warning "Don't look back, I petrify." Many visitors hesitate for a moment. On Jesuïtenstraat Street is the old coach house. The residents have cleared their living room for the soft marble statues by Ria de Graaff and the paintings by Zef Timmermans. Particularly beautiful is Timmermans' series of works titled 'Solar Flares'. With delicate black lines and soft yellow and blue colors, he manages to represent this in a striking way.

On the nearby Swalmerstraat Street, the visitor must walk very slowly to be able to read the text on the ground: "The stones you leave in your path, your children will stumble over." A creole expression that makes you reflect.

In the Carthusian Passage of the Carthusian monastery, four Spanish artists and one Belgian exhibit. It is curious that the Belgian Ben Snauwaert refers to Spain with his work, as his painted portraits resemble Picasso's. The Spaniards José Eugenio Marchesi and Rosendo Álvarez Cortés are both inspired by Italy. Marchesi combines images of Roman ruins with animal skulls and bones.

The painted canvases by Rosendo Álvarez Cortés look magnificent in this ancient colonnade gallery. He paints vague figures, shadows. They are literally depicted as transparent, so his canvases resemble frescoes on the walls. With religious chants in the background, you feel transported to the Renaissance era and it seems that Cortés' canvases have always been there.

A huge contrast with the Carthusian Passage is the ultra-modern light installations by Peter Bremers, a few meters away on the same street. The final point of the exhibition is the building on Steegstraat Street, where two French artists and a Dutch photographer exhibit.

Promenart can be visited this Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 16:00 hours..

ARTICLE OF: LIMBURGER ZATERDAG. April 20, 1991

Graffiti artists have attacked the center of Roermond. Bright drawings on the walls, slogans on the streets, paint cans in the trees.

It is striking that many feet have been painted, especially. I found it strange that the slogans were not of the usual genre of "I was here" and "Whoever reads this is crazy!" but rather from literary works. What was really odd was that the police thought everything was fine.

The painters were not just taggers, but participants in an artistic route through Roermond: the Promenart. Their painted feet and literary phrases are the colorful signs of this art route along monumental urban houses, where an international group of fifteen young artists exhibits.

Red Rocks

The Promenart walking route, an initiative of the weekly group Bijzondes Cultural Projects, starts in Karthuizer Park on Voogdijstraat Street. Once you've found that starting point, you can follow the route with your feet on the street.

The former Renaissance garden of Karthuizerpark has been given something special by artists Lucas Pellens and Stefan Custers. The fountain has been parked in a nest of branches. And the scattered pebbles in the grass are not gray, but yellow, blue, and red.

Twigs

... Four Spanish artists and one Belgian are exhibiting in the cloister of the Carthusian Monastery. It is curious, especially the Belgians. Ben Snauwaert points to Spain with his work, whose painted portraits resemble Picasso's. The Spaniards José Eugenio Marchesi and Rosendo Álvarez Cortes are inspired by Italy, Marchesi combines images of Roman constructions with those of skulls and animal bones.

Shadows

The painted canvases by Rosendo Álvarez Cortés stand out beautifully in this ancient colonnade. He paints vague, ghostly figures. They have been literally placed transparently, so that his canvases almost resemble frescoes on the walls. With church hymns in the background, one can imagine being in the Renaissance in this gallery.

El punto de las artes. February 8, 1990

Rosendo Alvarez, born in Madrid in 1961, holds a degree in Philosophy and studied Art in Bilbao, Madrid, and London. He has exhibited, to date, three times in Berlin, London, and Madrid. In 1989, he won the Young Creators Award from the City Council of Madrid. The richness of his surfaces, upon which baroque forms and architectures are drawn, manages to combine modernity and classicism in a very contemporary language, establishing himself as one of the names to watch. He is currently showing at Término Gallery, with whom he exhibited recently in Madrid.

ARCO '90

The recently established Término Gallery, founded in 1987, focuses on contemporary art. With an openness to any artistic trend, its limit lies in the quality of the works. While it pays special attention to promoting young artists, it also aims to showcase established artists, not only through exhibitions but also by maintaining an important collection of artworks.

At Arco'90, it featured Rosendo Alvarez, who despite his youth has held several exhibitions in Great Britain and Germany; Hilario Bravo, born in Caceres in 1955, exhibiting in various countries and creating imaginative paintings with a tendency toward surrealism; Jaime Sánchez, a participant in Biennials, the Madrid Community Plastic Arts Competition, and a prize winner at the Murcia Biennial in '88.