Opening Reception for the Artist Saturday, October 24, 12-5 pm
October 24 — December 19, 2026
Fredric Snitzer Gallery is pleased to present Rocío García: La Parisina, an exhibition of new paintings conceived during García's 2026 residency in Paris at Noemí Espace Brownstone Foundation. This exhibition showcases García's ability to draw viewers into intimate, psychologically charged moments, where characters inhabit the shadows of unfolding narratives, caught in moments of anticipation as their stories hover between revelation and uncertainty. Love, eroticism, and shifting power dynamics are central to this new body of work.
In La Parisina, García introduces a female protagonist who moves through a series of scenes set in different environments, exploring themes of provocation, lust, and hedonism. Drawing from her time in Paris, García engages in a dialogue with twentieth-century French art, particularly Henri Matisse's work, revisiting the sensuality and atmosphere of a bygone era. Through expressive color, decorative patterns, and carefully constructed spatial relationships, she evokes an idealized vision of Paris, where the ghosts of its artistic past intertwine with her own imagination and experiences. The resulting compositions unfold as fragments of a larger narrative, shaped as much by nostalgia and memory as by the artist's lived experience.
A storyteller at heart, García constructs spaces that move fluidly between reality, fiction, and metaphor. Through a sophisticated interplay of color, pattern, and spatial relationships, García creates visual narratives that embrace painting's expressive possibilities. Drawing inspiration from international cinema, the artist explores the myriad ways cinematic language can shape a narrative, evoke emotion, and transform an idea, incident, or event into a compelling visual experience. Throughout La Parisina, these influences converge in scenes suspended between intimacy and uncertainty, offering a nuanced exploration of desire, agency, and the complexities of human relationships.
About Rocío García Rocío García (b. 1955, Santa Clara, Cuba) graduated from the San Alejandro School of Fine Arts in 1975 and received her MFA from the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad, Soviet Union (present-day St. Petersburg, Russia), in 1983. Considered one of the most important contemporary female Cuban painters, García is known for her distinctive narrative style, which explores themes of gender, sexuality, identity, and power.
Since the early 1980s, García's work has challenged conventional representations of the body and sexuality, using eroticism to examine social norms, political structures, and personal freedom. Drawing from cinema, literature, comics, and her own experiences, her paintings combine expressive color, theatrical compositions, and an often provocative sense of humor. Recurring figures, including sailors, policemen, rabbits, and other archetypal characters, populate a universe in which desire, authority, and vulnerability continually intersect.
Recent solo exhibitions include The Object of Power is Power, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York (2026); Sur les traces du lapin blanc (In the Footsteps of the White Rabbit), Noemí Espace Brownstone, Paris (2026); Fantasías y delirios de Ahmed, NG Art Gallery, Panama City (2025); El Gran Chef (alias Patica de Pollo), EL APARTAMENTO, Havana (2023); Bellas Flores del Mal, Thomas Nickels Project, New York (2021); and Beliki Tuman (The Big Fog), Villa Manuela Gallery, 13th Havana Biennial (2019).
Other notable exhibitions include Geishas or Pictures of the Floating World, 23 and 12 Art Center, Havana, Cuba (1997); Tribute to Sappho, Common Language Bookstore, Ann Arbor, Michigan (1997); My Little Pieces for Sale, Racklan Building East Gallery (1997); Male Sailor Men, Habana Gallery, Havana, Cuba (1999), The Tamer and Other Stories, Habana Gallery, Havana, Cuba (2003); The Thriller National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba (2007); Sassy Lady Havana Gallerie, Zürich, Switzerland (2007); Very Very Light…and Very Dark: a Policeman with Alzheimer, La Casona Gallery, Havana, Cuba (2010); Hidden Realities, Sidney Mishkin Gallery, New York ( 2011); and The Return of Jack, the Punisher…, HabanaGallery, Havana, Cuba (2012).
Rocío García has received various national and international awards, including the National Culture Distinction from the Ministry of Culture in Cuba (2005); the National Award of Illustration from the Cuban Book Institute (2000); Mention of Honor, Second Painting Biennial of the Caribbean and Central America from the Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1994) and Special Mention of Painting, Hall of the City from the Provincial Center of Plastic Arts and Design, Havana (1991).
Her works are in major museum collections including the Brownstone Foundation, Paris, France; the Ron Pizzuti Collection, USA; the National Museum of Fine Arts, Cuba; The Jorge Perez Collection, USA; The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, USA; the Farber Collection, USA; Cheng Xin Dong Space for Contemporary Art, China; Contemporary Art Fund, University of Michigan, USA; the Center for Cuban Studies, USA; the Repin Academy of Art Museum, Russia.
