Felix Berroa

Born in San Pedro de Macoris, Dominican Republic.

"Felix Berroa is a serious. inquiet and hard-working. He has been like that since his beginnings. He has never sastify with his first studies, nor his first success. He has gone deeper into the stamp techniques, having a sense of investigation and in the same way has happened with his work of painter.

The wish of learning, knowing, and experiencing has taken him to New York and Long Island, that is why we mention the "absent" artist. There his life and work have allways challenged difficulties with courage and results -art shows and awards-. In addition to this he is one of the fewest Dominican artists to have had the "honor" of being criticized by the New York Times, very favorable for sure. Despite the distance, he does not lose contact with Santo Domingo, he sends news of his and photos.

Now there is the oportunity to see a generous sequence of his recent works. He solo exhibit in Centro de Arte Propuesta. He present paintings through simultaneously with the set of colors it is sensed of graphic creator, a skilful in graphic and drawing, with even hightlights his abstracionism! We need...a "Artist's Book". We will no forget that outstanding participation at the National Biennial of 1981, a work from a graphic virtuous man...

Felix Berroa is in our fine arts an artist who possess his own unmistakable seal through the years. He can modify the color, the base, the composition. Pierrot's faces remain, sad until they are smiling. Faces that border the self-portrait, faces with big eyes, interrogative and intropective ones. If we will look for a resemblance would be the characters's cousins of Master Candido Bido, also filled with an inner look and nostalgic stillness-possessed. Internatilally speaking, would be the Bolivian Graciela Rodo Boulanger's misterious children's.

The title of this show is significant: "Bodies and Though's Ecstasy". Felix Berroa's metalanguage has always ranged between the physic and psychis, between inocence and mischievousness, between the erotic and espiritual. His main characters, seemingly mediative and far away, are able to convey behavior, experiencies, constant emotions. sometimes in the same work, face conveys a state of being, but the body (or part of the body) another one, just is happens in the present show for several works which become in an "internal Dictych", apart from the truly polytic ones.

Felix Berroa paints, places, spaces, gets togheter and move his characters choreography-like. Moreover, we do not stop seeing them like puppets -the physionomy helps- that the "meneur de jeu" or director manipulates by means of invisible threads, them he stops and set them like a show or ballet final position two-dimentioned on the canvas...

One of the greatest modern painters, Gerald Garouste, said that graphic has a great vocabulary richness and its "writing imposes very sophisticated rules in its black and white limit". No doubt we might apply this observation to the Dominican artist, who through his painting allows the graphic man to be seen, sometimes in the austerity of black and white, thus achieving his best result. Indeed in works structurally less complex, more sober chromactically seaking, Felix Berroa is able to get a legible pictorical and coherent expression, even overwhelming. Like many artists, he has to brake enthusiasm, the multiplicator elements dynamism.

What we particularly minde was Felix Berroa's revelation as an abstract artist. We placed hin within the category somewhat magic fantastic, but we now discovered an abstract with lot of strenght in color and in space construction rhythmically animated. The abstract-figurative vertical diptych is one of the most atractive works of his presentation. We would love to enjoy a Felix Berroa's entirely abstract exhibition! We hoppe he do no let us waiting to long for his next exhibition, be abstract, figurative or mixed."

By Marianne de Tolentino, Listin Diario, 1993.