ROBERTO MÁRQUEZ

"The work of Roberto Márquez has always oscillated between poetry and image. The spiritual quality with which the artist is able to infuse his works is a rare commodity in an age when many painters (especially younger ones) operate within a range of skepticism and irony, leaving little room-or having little tolerance for-the poetical, the mythical or the dream-like. Márquez  is a pleasing exception to this rule. He has always been an artist concerned with divesting his images of direct references to the mundane aspects of observed reality. At the same time, however, he places the protagonists of his intimate dramas on a plane where we, the viewers, are confronted with people and situations vaguely recognizable. Yet when observing the pictorial repertory of Roberto Márquez we are not certain whether we have confronted the situations which he presents to us in real life on in some half-forgotten dream.

... Although Roberto Márquez is an avid reader of fiction and poetry, he never illustrates in the common sense of the word. He is, rather, concerned with creating the type of illusion in his works akin to that which the reader of a novel or an engrossing short story or the most evocative poetical works may be immersed. There is not a 'narrative' sensibility in Marquez’s paintings. He does not wish to tell us a story or connect any of the visions that he creates with concrete metaphors or specific allegories. He relies, instead, on the intelligence of his viewers to absorb the essential qualities of his images and forge for themselves the notions that almost automatically emerge from the consciousness of each one of us who submits ourselves to the complex web of meanings inherent in Marquez’s paintings."

From "Oneiric Visions of Roberto Márquez”

by Edward J. Sullivan

New York University

Fragment of article published in the magazine Art Nexus 2004