Freddy Rodríguez

Y me quedé sin nombre
1974

Not on view

Date
1974

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Acrylic on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 70 1/8 × 35 7/8in. (178.1 × 91.1 cm)

Accession number
2021.20

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from the Painting and Sculpture Committee

Rights and reproductions
© Freddy Rodríguez

API
artworks/64238

Visual description

Freddy Rodriguez,Y me quedé sin nombre, 1974.Y me quedé sin nombre(translated to "and I remained without a name") is a highly geometric acrylic painting on canvas. The painting measures 70 ⅛ inches tall by 35 ⅞ inches wide.

Three dark green outlines of shapes—a parallelogram, a trapezoid, an outstretched kite—balance atop each other. Inside of the parallelogram, the trapezoid, and outstretched kite are straight lines crossing the lime green filling of each shape. The parallelogram features an orange line, a brown line of equal thickness, and a thinner desaturated blue line–all running diagonally to the left. In the middle, the trapezoid features two lines—one thicker yellow line and one thinner brown line—running parallel to the base of the painting. The third and final form—the outstretched diamond shape—has a red line, a blue line, and a brown line (all of equal thickness) extending diagonally to the right. The blue background of the painting—darker on the left side and lighter on the right—is both flat and dynamic, playing into the illusion of shadows and depth.

The artist chose to include vibrant green hues, which we might associate with spring, birth, and vitality. The geometric elements might evoke a traffic stop light that has every bulb glowinggreen go go.

Rodríguez’s attention to balance, shape, proportion, and scale all work to create an abstract painting that references the human body in motion with influences from dance and movement of Merengue and Bachata, two dances made popular inthe Dominican Republic, Rodríguez’s birthplace.

Conceptually, the name of the paintingY me quedé sin nombre(which translates to "and I remained without a name") points to another abstraction. Instead of simply titling this work “Untitled” or “sin título,” Rodríguez chose a less detached, more poetic way of saying the same thing. In doing so, he might be imbuing a potentially impersonal abstraction with subjective sensibilities, subverting any notion of objectivity.





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