Mariano Rodriguez is known by his roosters, a visual imprint he left in the Cuban painting of the 20th century. A mark of resistance and plenitude, as poet Roberto Fernandez Retamar pointed out "with the firm steps of the workers, the spurs of the roosters sprouted; with the fire of the bloody painful battles, the eyes of the rooster lit up; with the thunder of the multitude, with the cry of combat, the rooster crowed."
The poet's lyrical images summarize the trajectory and legacy of an artist whose 110th anniversary of his birth we celebrate this August 24, someone who was very much indivisible in his artistic contributions and his passionate bond with the Homeland and the ideals of social justice.
The roosters, of course, are only a part of Mariano's work; many his painting was cultivated with intelligence, skill and sense of belonging to his culture and social reality, in an ascending evolution that began with his Mexican experience in the 1930s, when he admired the work of Rodríguez Lozano, and continued going higher in the times of the School of Havana, his contacts with expressionist abstractionism, and ended consolidating in the last 30 years of his career, when the fruits and the masses appeared.
Since the 1950s, Mariano was valued for his exhibitions in Cuba and abroad, including a participation in the Sao Paulo Biennial. He added his talent and conviction to the revolutionary transformations. He put his prestige in function of the social work and cultural development when assuming the presidency of the first grouping of artists of the plastic arts in the UNEAC, and working in the Casa de las Americas as the head of Plastic Arts, and then, after the death of the unforgettable Haydée Santamaría, as President of the institution.
A facet that has not been so much discussed is the one that places him among the best illustrators of literary works ever produced in our country. His work in the editorial teams of the magazines Espuela de Plata and Orígenes is one to be remembered.
Among the many appraisals that his work has deserved, poet and essayist Roberto Mendez made one of the most penetrating ones: "Mariano had the ability, within the assumptions that he shared with other artists such as Amelia Pelaez and RenePortocarrero, to forge an original style, which shunned the purely decorative and self-congratulatory, to concentrate on a painting that seems nurtured by the archetypes of the Cuban identity."
