Windsor Betts

Painter of mysteries and metaphors: Mexican-born artist Roberto Marquez provides new perspectives on life's often dark horizons, while defying definition. Fortunately, this latter realm seems to predominate these days in numerous paintings notable for their optimism and peaceful mood. In concert with the restoration of his physical and emotional health, Marquez has also managed to open the horizons of his paintings and embrace the breadth of existence. Indeed, this one-time architect recently has demonstrated remarkable skills as a nature painter in such works as Secret Flower (2000) and La otra primavera (2000), both of which lovingly portray his wife as a temptress, her eyes cast downward as she stands in a verdant setting worthy of Botticelli. In the latter painting her body bears the artist's tell-tale checkerboard pattern, with erogenous zones teasingly half-revealed. Seduction also is central to a painting called In the Forest of the Zebra (2000), in which his wife, adorned with the black and white stripes of that animal, holds a snake of temptation. Reasons for hope also emanate from Vagaries of Spring (2000), set amid blossoming trees with the artist standing upon his own giant head in the fashion of Caravaggio's David and Goliath. In mood, the contrast could not be more marked when one compares this work with a similar painting, The Theory of King David, of a year earlier. There, with downcast eyes, the artist reclines uneasily upon his own enormous broken bust before wind-blown trees and threatening skies.While quiet appropriation, be it visual, musical, or literary, enriches all of Marquez's paintings and attests to his restless curiosity, as an artist he is always his own person. His arresting images are instantly recognizable as uniquely "Marquezian" and furthermore, admirably so, they defy easy categorization.
"A friend recently called me the missing link in Mexican painting because I have almost nothing in common with Mexican art--or that of New York, for that matter. Especially here in New York, there is little interest in true painting. It is considered passe. Mostly it is installations, conceptual art, performance art, certainly not paintings of figurative stuff! In truth, I see myself as a marginal artist. I don't mean that in a self-deprecating sense, that what I do doesn't matter. It's just that I produce out of step with current trends. Also I don't fit because I am a Mexican living in New Jersey, not showing in New York but ironically, exhibiting mostly in the Southwest and Mexico, where my career began."
Since 1986, Marquez has done eight solo exhibitions with Riva Yares, who shows in galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as in public institutions. In 1994 the Tucson Art Museum hosted the exhibition Sojourns in the Labyrinth. Three years later the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo in Monterrey, Mexico, sponsored another large show, Fragmentos del tiempo. Recently Art Books International, a London-based publishing house, issued a comprehensive survey of Marquez's career to date. The hardcover monograph, with text by the distinguished English art historian Edward Lucie-Smith contains full-color reproductions of paintings from all periods, including the luscious canvases he has done since recovering from his operation.