Kendall Art Center
(305) 778-7739
12063 SW 131 Ave Miami, Florida 33186
Women Artists in the Rodríguez Collection: Celebrate International Women’s Day and Female Artists within our collection and beyond our walls. The Rodríguez Collection highlights women artists whose artwork spans a variety of media, genres, and eras. We hope you will share our #WomenArtists on social media, and celebrate the important contributions these women have made to the arts.
Amelia Peláez, Loló Soldevilla, Gina Pellón, Consuelo Castañeda, Astrid Alcayaga, Ana Maria Sarlat, Angela Alés, Marlys Fuego, Milena Martinez, Aimee Perez, Zaida del Río, Ana Albertina, Ivonne Ferrer, Rossitch, Lisyanet Rodríguez, Sandra Ramos.
Gina Pellón, Untitled, mixed media on paper, 26 x 18.”
Gina Pellón (b. Cumanayagua, Cuba, 1926 – d. Paris, 2014). At the beginning, she attended the San Alejandro Academy in Havana, Cuba where she received a solid-six-year formative training which later on helped her become a knowledgeable and confident artist. Her resolute spirit to stay on the pulse and a no-fear personality takes her to France. Reborn in 1959 (the definitive year when Gina left the island with another group of Cuban artists and arrived in Paris), she immediately fell in love with the city and decided to stay permanently. Paris offered the young artist, a vibrant atmosphere, a bountiful cultural life and a different group of friends. From this moment on, and despite the obvious difficulties of adaptation while living in exile, she worked hard and pursued her long-standing desire to become a professional artist. She expanded her horizons, mingled with personalities such as Breton, Matta, Lam, Asger Jorn, and learned about the popular art movements of the times. Throughout her career, she received several awards such as, the Medal of the City of Cholet (France, 1961), Order of Arts and Letters (France, 1978), and the Cintas Foundation Fellowship (New York, 1978), among others. Her work has been exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in Venice, Miami, Silkeborg (Denmark), Paris, Copenhagen, Nantes, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Trodheim (Norway), Caracas, and Lausanne (Switzerland), among other cities.
“Although color is the major protagonist in this artist’s work, we must not forget the presence of her characters: fairies, dolls, butterflies, birds … always winged characters in search of transparency, as Juan Ramon Jimenez requested in his best poems in Background Animal. Gina Pellon’s encounter with the group Cobra, as well as with the lyrical rapture of Chagall or the magic of Aloyse, was the catalyst for work that was already acquiring a maturity of expression shaped in Havana. Paris was, however, the decisive encounter as for so many other artists. Matta, for example, provided her with dynamic color within space, while the Cobra artists granted spontaneity and boldness, constant elements in her work. Armed with an extensive and intense gamut of color, the world of Gina Pellon bursts into light, conveying a strange message for our times: the joy of being.”
Fragment retrieved from the essay “10 Cuban Artists in Paris” by Carlos M. Luis.
PERMANENT COLLECTION The Rodriguez Collection is privately funded by Leo Rodrigues and he’s family. It is one of the Miami’s largest, privately owned Cuban contemporary art collections. Leo began buying and selling works of art from the last decade of the 20th century, and established its Permanent Collection in 1994 and now numbers approximately 200 works. The collection reflects significant artistic developments in contemporary art by established artists from Cuba, U.S. and abroad. The collection is constantly expanding and features such well-known artists as Cundo Bermúdez, Jose Bedia, Pedro Vizcaíno, Néstor Arenas, Manuel Mendive, Silvio Gaytón, Vicente Dopico Lerner, Aisar Jalil, Pedro Avila Gendis, José Orbeín, Ahmed Gómez, Geandy Pavón, Angel Delgado, Ciro Quintana, Jose María Mijares and Gina Pellón.
