Craig Rubadoux, Bandonista Lunes Buenos Aires, watercolor, pencil on paper, 14 by 17 inches. Titled on upper right.
Craig Rubadoux moved to Sarasota with his family in 1945 and at the age of 8, began children’s summer art classes at the Ringling Museum of Art directed by famed abstract artist Syd Solomon. An aptitude for art led to his first one man show with the Sarasota Art Association at age eleven. In 1954 he received a scholarship to the Ringling School. In 1955, still in high school, Rubadoux apprenticed to nationally known artist Ben Stahl who lived in Sarasota and accompanied the Stahl family on a trip to Spain in 1956. Rubadoux stayed in Spain for two years studying art and exhibiting in galleries in Madrid and Malaga.
When he returned in 1958, he had one-man exhibits with the Sarasota Art Association and the Creative Arts Gallery in St. Petersburg, while working as an associate in the art education department at the Ringling, the Hilton Leach Amagansett School in Sarasota, and the Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut.
Craig Rubadoux, Journey, oil on canvas, 24 by 30 inches. Titled verso,
Craig Rubadoux, Rider and Her Oboe, oil on canvas, 31 by 38 inches. Signed and titled left
Over the next 60 years Rubadoux taught art at the University of South Florida, the University of Florida and at Florida Atlantic University. His work shown from Spain, to Woodstock, to Sarasota, from the Guggenheim Museum in New York to the High Museum in Atlanta, to the Ringling. James Cap, curator of art at the University of South Florida regarded Rubadoux as, “potentially the outstanding Florida artist of the generation.”
Craig Rubadoux, oil on canvas 29 1/4 by 53 inches. Signed left side.
When his one-man opened at the Allyn Galup Contemporary Art gallery in Sarasota in 2015, Mark Ormond, the curator of the exhibit said of Rubadoux: “It may be a thought, a memory, a work, a person, or an animal. His approach is this own. It is neither pure realism nor pure abstraction. Rubadoux has, since the beginning of his career, integrated and fused his ideas about painting that appear to reference both surrealist and automatic drawing and biomorphic figuration.” Rubadoux has been called, like his early mentors, Syd Solomon and Ben Stahl, a “Sarasota master,” his paintings intensely personal glimpses into emotions, his environment and nature. He thought of his work as a journal. *
Born: 1937, Rochester, New York. Education: Ringling Museum; Ringling School of Art; with Syd Solomon; Ben Stahl; Margaret Clement. Membership: Sarasota Art Association; Art League of Manatee County, 1955-56. Exhibits: Florida State Fair, Tampa, 1958, Torremolinos; Sarasota Art Association, Flowers and Landscape Exhibition, January 1959, Sevilla; Sun Art Theater, Green Room Art Gallery, St. Petersburg, 1959; Governor’s All Florida Art Show, Ringling Museum of Art, January-February 1960, oil, Night Figures; Sarasota Art Association, Members’ Annual Juried Exhibition, February 1960, Por Que?; Sarasota Art Association Annual, April 1960, Ringling Museum, Knight Errant; Florida State Fair, Tampa, 1962, prize, Presence in a Field; Washington Federal Savings and Loan, Miami Beach, June 1962, one-man exhibit; Beaux Arts Gallery, Pinellas Park, August 1962, one-man exhibit; Albert Dorne Gallery, Westport, Connecticut, 1961; Sarasota Art Association Gallery, October 1963, one-man exhibit, Man and Beast, 25 large drawings, many in color, then to the University of South Florida and the Lowe Art Gallery at the University of Miami. The exhibit organized by the Ringling Museum traveled to museums & galleries throughout the southeast; Florida State Fair, Tampa, February 1964, honorable mention, oil on paper, Head Dead; Florida Pavilion, New York World’s Fair, 1964, That I Love You, Ensor, Babe; Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, 1968, 1st prize, Hortt Invitational; Broward Junior College, September 1968, Man In A Lifeboat and Young Girl; The Gallery, Miami, January 1977, one-man exhibit including, Lady from Burma, Ubangi, The Last Giraffe in the World-Medusa; Ringling Museum of Art, one-man exhibit, September- October, 1986, Craig Rubadoux-Works on Paper, 1962-1984, including, Sweet Swinger and Ugly Ole Wart Hog; Tampa Art Center, February 1991, Special Places and Things, a one-man exhibit, February 1991, including La Vela Rose; Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art Gallery, Sarasota, March-April 2015, one-man exhibit; One man shows in Woodstock and Provincetown; Guggenheim Museum, New York City; High Museum, Atlanta; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art; Polk Museum, Lakeland; Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg; Holland and Knight, Tampa; Palm Beach International Airport.
*Port Charlote Sun, February 25, 2015
