LANDSCAPES & VEDUTE

More than any other visual-arts form, from the Baroque Age onward, LANDSCAPES & VEDUTE have been singularly responsible for the evolution of Modern abstraction, e.g., evolving from Nicolas Poussin to John Constable, Paul Cezanne, Paul Nash and Malcolm Morley. In the 21st Century, vedute and landscape traditions persist, among artists like Nikolai Buglaj, Salvatore Tagliarino, José Rodeiro, Nelson Alvarez and Duda Penteado.

Among Rodeiro’s Web-gallery vedutes are three scenes of Jersey City Facing New York (versions 1, 2, and 3) (8 ½” x 11”). These panoramic studies were fashioned in 1999, when Rodeiro sat (at Liberty State Park) in his car painting watercolor views of Manhattan; at that time, Minoru Yamasaki’s dazzling World Trade Towers (WTC) still stood, appearing ( -- in Rodeiro’s watercolor vision of them -- ) like twin white-beacons of light aiming up at the sky, or like ghost-buildings. Sadly, on September 11, 2001, due to a terrorist attack, both enormous towers vanished.

Rodeiro’s love of landscape painting manifested while in Nicaragua (1993-1995), when he first viewed and then painted the towering Momotombo Volcano, which inspired several paintings (one version is in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffery Wilson, Washington, DC.). Also, while in Nicaragua, Rodeiro created quick-studies of genre-scenes and street-life throughout towns and villages; an example is included in the web-gallery, i.e., Masaya (8 ½” x 11”). In the 1970s, Rodeiro often visited Mexico researching Maya and Maya-Toltec ruins; visible in the Web-gallery are four recent depictions of Maya architecture inspired by the poetry of Steve Barfield’s book Festival of Stone (New York: Bitter Oleander Press).

José Rodeiro Momotombo on Lake Managua, oil-on-linen, 24"-x-37," 1995 (Collection of the artist).