Lydia Rubio is a multidisciplinary visual artist. Born in Cuba and raised in Puerto Rico, she is the third generation of women painters in her family. Her 43-year studio practice started in New York City. After years based in Miami and Bogota, she now lives in Hudson, New York. Her work consists of paintings, unique journals and large site-specific installations.
Rubio’s work is deeply rooted in her knowledge of form, geometry, architecture, and art. Her influences are vast –music, literature, elements of nature and Latin American culture. These are just a few of the topics that inspire her process. An avid and curious reader of art history, theory and philosophy, Rubio carefully applies traditional and theoretical approaches to her works. Extensive travel and visits to international art museum collections further inform her approach to her art.Painting is at the core of her practice. Primarily based on a conceptual system, not a fixed style.
Rubio has also completed large-scale public art commissions of metal sculptures and floor designs: the Gates of Earth and Air at the Raleigh Durham Airport, and for Miami Dade County, the Gates of Love, Wisdom and Courage at the Women’s Park and an installation of paintings, sculptures, and text, We Heard Birds Passing, at the Carnival Cruise Terminals, Port of Miami.
Her work has been exhibited internationally in over thirty solo shows and ninety group shows. They include a two person show at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and a solo at The Center for Book Arts in New York and The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale. Group exhibitions include the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Museum of the Americas Washington DC, Museum of Latin American Art Long Beach CA, Frost Art Museum and Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida, Snite Museum of Art, Indiana, Lehigh University, Pittsburg, and Pratt Manhattan Gallery. Her works are in the permanent collections at The Lowe Museum of Art, the Eskenazi Museum, the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Stanford University, Bryn Mawr College, the University of Southern California and many private collections in Austria, Canada, Colombia, Switzerland, and the USA.
Rubio holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from the University of Florida; Urban Design Studies, Universita Degli Studi; School of Architecture, Florence, Italy; and a Master of Architecture from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design. Her extensive experience refined her understanding of the constructive and poetic qualities of architecture and supplied her with a perception of space resulting in successfully completed public art installations. A ten-year design and teaching experience includes Parsons School of Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and the University of Puerto Rico, School of Architecture.
Rubio has been awarded the Tree of Life, the Ellies Oolite Creatives Award, the Pollock Krasner, State of Florida Artist Award, the Miami-Dade Community Foundation Grant, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Fellowship, the Graham Foundation Research Grant, and the Cintas Fellowship Award.
Writer and scholar, Enrico M. Santi, wrote in 2015, in an essay for Review Magazine, “For the past thirty-five years, the artist Lydia Rubio has worked with an overall premise: art is a mystery whose solution can be as desirable as it is elusive. Rubio proceeds like a postmodern Gnostic, intent on pursuing dispersed clues of a hermetic secret and organizing themes according to a formal strategy of fragments, structured in series that spawn paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints—duly accompanied by diaries, maps, notes, even doodles.”
Emir Rodriguez Monegal, a major literacy critic and scholar wrote in response to Rubio’s exhibition in 1985 at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, “An art of illusion and of obsession which is both calligraphically lucid and elusive. Borges once said: The esthetic phenomenon is the imminence of a revelation which does not occur. In these paintings and drawings we are nearer than we will ever be to that revelation.”
Artist Statement
“The Arts magnify our feelings and life experiences; they transform, inspire, and illuminate our daily perceptions, connecting us to the spiritual.”
Spanish
Lydia Rubio es una artista plástica con mas de 30 años de trayectoria reconocida. Su práctica se especializa en pinturas, dibujos, libros de artista y esculturas de gran escala para espacios públicos. Nacida en La Habana, Cuba, ha residido en Puerto Rico, Italia, Boston, New York y Miami Florida. Desde el 2010 reside en Bogotá, Colombia, desde entonces su temática ha girado en torno a Bogotá y sus alrededores.
Lista parcial de muestras individuales: Sincronía 10. 2014, La Localidad 5.2014, Feria Sincronía 2012 en Bogotá Colombia. MIA Art Fair, Palm Beach Art Fair, Beaux Arts Des Ameriques, Montreal CA, Kunsthaus Miami, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami Florida, Bridgewater Lustberg NYC, Gutierrez Fine Arts Miami, Gloria Luria, Miami, Intar Gallery NYC. Muestras de grupo en museos: Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Bass Museum of Art, Frost Art Museum, Miami, Florida, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Museum of Latin American Art Long Beach CA, Tampa Museum of Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts NYC.
Comisiones en espacios públicos son obras de gran escala completadas en el Puerto de Miami Terminal de Cruceros Carnival, esculturas y pinturas, Aeropuerto de Raleigh Durham NC esculturas y diseño de pisos, The Women’s Park en Miami Dade County rejas escultóricas y pisos exteriores.
Colecciones de museos: Stanford University, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, University of Southern California, University of Indiana, University of Miami Richter Library, The Wolfsonian FIU, The Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Lowe Art Museum, Miami Dade Community College and Art in Public Places y numerosas colecciones privadas en Estados Unidos, Canada, Austria, Suiza y Colombia.
Educacion: Maestría en Arquitectura en la Universidad de Harvard y Bachillerato en Arquitectura en la Universidad de la Florida, cursos en La Universita Degli Studi en Florencia, Italia. Ha ensenado en la Escuela de Diseño de Harvard, Parsons School of Design y la Universidad de Puerto Rico.
Ha recibido la beca Pollock Krasner, la beca Cintas, el Individual Artist Fellowship del Estado de la Florida. Es autodidacta en el campo de las artes plásticas.