JULIO CESAR RODRIGUEZ AGUILAR
Julio Cesar Rodríguez Aguilar was born on September 14, 1976 in Holguin, Cuba, a city in which he grew up and studied.
From a very early age, he was enthusiastic about drawing, so that in his adolescence he entered the Vocational School of Art Raúl Gómez Garcia in the city of Holguín in 1988, showing his talents among students of his generation. In the Vocational School of Art, he learned much of the formal skills that he has developed over the course of his pictorial career.
After his years at the vocational level, he entered the Professional Academy of Visual Arts in his city, graduating in the specialty of Painting, Drawing, Photography and Artistic Weaving in 1995. In those years, he gave himself fully to the learning process, focusing on the academic drawing and the great master’s techniques as well as the classic paintings. These studies were the path to follow in his constant search of a personal language.
Between 1998 and 2004 he was a professor of drawing at different levels of artistic education, becoming even more involved in the cultural activity of his city and the future of new generations of artists. His work includes more than 10 illustrated books, numerous awards in exhibitions and visual arts events, as well as participation in contemporary music and dance festivals in Cuba and abroad with his expertise in stage design, costume design and muralism.
After experimenting with various techniques and procedures, both in painting, engraving and sculpture, he directed his preference for oil painting. He found fascination in the meticulous study of Spanish Baroque painting with the works of Jose Rivera, Murillo and Velázquez, Caravaggio's chiaroscuro and the Italians, the drawing of Durero and the expressionist-abstract tendencies of Russian painting. During this search, he discovered the surrealist paintings of artists Salvador Dalí and Rene Magritte, which provided him with the necessary vision of what he really felt most identified, the mystical, the surreal and the poetic.
The paintings of Julio Cesar transports us to a dreamlike and alternative world where he amuses himself with his unconscious and dialogues with his most common thoughts and memories. His creation is the ideal medium to channel his most unreal state, convinced that reality is none other than that his eyes can persuade, to transform it at will. In his paintings there is an inseparable connection between nature and the human being, assuming it as his existential condition. His works expose a theatrical universe where stories and situations play through characters and figures of his own mysticism, with which he has managed to write his most intimate and sacred artistic script valued as his own staging.
Whether for his technicism, precise drawing skills, his impressive pictorial ability or his poetic speech, his work is found in private collections in countries such as USA, Mexico, Italy, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Belgium, Panama, China, Germany , Dominican Republic, Spain, Puerto Rico, Argentina and Cuba.