Salvador Rosillo by Anthony Haden-Guest

Salvador Rosillo with Black and White Abstraction painting.

By ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST August 4, 2024

If being in New York has played a foundational role in any artist’s bio it’s that of Salvador Rosillo. His father was Spanish, his mother Texan, he was born in Mexico, and he was art-making more or less from the get-go. “I started painting with my fingers in a Sunday day school in a Methodist church,” he says. “That’s what I remember earliest”. In his teens he moved to Manhattan to be an artist, first joining the army, and becoming a sharpshooter. Army benefits took him to Columbia University after his release in 1969 and there he settled down to making art.

“I made paintings about astrophysics and I would get orgasms” he says. He also took to curating shows in a high school controlled by the Young Lords, Puerto Rican activists. “Big shows, sometimes 200 people,” he says. “And I had a very loose entry, whatever you brought in I put it up. That was part of the effervescence of what was happening on the Lower East Side.” 

In 1976 Rosillo married a wealthy Venezuelan, Margalit Berlin, and they moved into a roomy studio apartment in Reade Street, off Canal Street. “The building was full of artists,” he says. “The whole neighbourhood was full of artists.” The marriage didn’t endure but Margalit had seen to it that he was named in the lease. “That saved my arse,” he says. “I was a space cadet, I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from and I didn’t care.”

Rosillo, whose buying up of marijuana stocks and venture into medical marijuana I have written about elsewhere -  he created Hemp Americana, a multi-million dollar company – meant that the coming of his next meal was no longer a problem, is now alone in the building, his fellow artist tenants having been turfed out by his landlords, who plan a highrise. Rosillo though beat the landlords in court. “I am immovable,” he said.

Salvador Rosillo, Pigmentation.

Rosillo’s sizeable space is choc-a-bloc with stacks of his paintings. These have become a presence in the fluid artworld that has been rapidly evolving in New York as a reaction to the mega-gallery dominated system, most specifically because of the often dominant space given a single canvas in the thematic shows curated by Reid Stowe and Maxine Hoover. It’s a striking body of work, and not least because of Rosillo’s magnificent indifference to that art market shibboleth, a signature style. Here in his studio are figurative paintings, paintings with abstract elements, pure abstractions and abstractions which embody a story. “These are exploding galaxies” Rosillo said of one. “Galactic crashes create whole universes. This is not my idea, this is science.”

Here too are bodies of work made in ways that Rosillo developed himself, such as Paintographs, photographs of his paintings, which reprinted with thick glossy surfaces, and a group of canvases that he has covered with white gesso, carved drawings into with sticks, then painted. Which, he said, came out of his long looking at ancient Egyptian bas reliefs.

There are also singular pieces. He fished out a painting embellished with two streaks of silver tape. This, he said, had been attacked at one of his Lower East Side shows in the Young Lords’ controlled space. “The motherfucker slashed it with a knife and put it in the dumpster. It took me a long time to resolve the problem of the cuts,” he said.

Rosillo’s solution was to bring in an element of light by silver-taping the cuts. The work of Lucio Fontana, the Argentinian, who sliced his canvases because he was obsessed with space, was brought to his attention. “I didn’t know about him, I’m not a copycat. I came to the cut by a different road,” he said.    

Reid Stowe feels that Rosillo is underknown for a simple reason. “He won’t sell work” he said. Rosillo says this is not wholly the case, that it was by sale of paintings that he financed his start-up of Hemp Americana. “I would like to sell paintings. I was hobnobbing with the big capitalists there. But at the same time I am trying to hold on to a great amount of work instead of scattering them here and there”.

Such as his work created in response to 9/11. Artists have always dealt with warfare, but not necessarily by working on the front. Picasso wasn’t at Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, Henry Moore was in London during the Blitz but his oeuvre depicted snugly wrapped humans in air raid shelters. So just where was Rosillo on September 11 2001? In his fourth floor studio. Where he heard an explosion outside, went to a window.

“It was a beautiful day”, he says. “All the windows were open.” There was a clear view of the World Trade Center from his studio’s middle window. ”And there was a huge hole in the building,” Rosillo said. “But you would not know it was made by a plane when you looked at it.”

 Rosillo then went up to the roof along with the other artists in the building to figure out what was going on. “I was the first one to say the tower is going to fall down”, he says. “Then the second plane came from the South. It hit the second building.” He added ”The first plane had hit the building high up. But it hit it lower, in a better position for the building to collapse. There was a ball of fire, it was big. And it dropped all kinds of debris, including an airplane motor.”

Salvador Rosillo, Semi-Figuration.

Did Rosillo see people falling?

“Oh yeah! Lots of them. Not one or two.”

He said he was focusing on the antenna that sat on top of the main tower. Just why was he so interested in the antenna? “Because it was very heavy” he said. And right beneath the antenna were quarters which were known to be occupied by intelligence. And which, he said, were also believed to be “full of dangerous chemicals”

So you thought the antenna might hit that?

“Yeah! Definitely. And that would send the fire burning all the way to 57^th Street.”

Being fearful of the tower’s collapse, Rosillo had been planning to leave before the second plane hit. “When the second plane hit, I thought we were at war. At that moment I changed my mind and didn’t leave. But everybody else left! And what happened is the buildings fell down so fast that you cannot believe it.”   

There have understandably been after-effects from 9/ll. Some just physical. “I could see everything from the windows,” Rosillo said. “And I had no time to close the windows. So the place got full of dust poison. Five months later I was paralysed on the left side. Because of that.”

But the effects on his artmaking were way longer-lasting “I was so traumatised by the event that I could not paint anything except 9/11 for more than two years. So I have a lot of 9/11s,” he said. These works include paintings of the central event and portraits of Osama bin Laden and others who played a part in its dark birth.

So has he sold any pieces from his 9/11 oeuvre?

“Well, you know I want to hold onto them and put them into a museum, that would hold the shit that I do,” Salvador Rosillo told me. ”I’ve been trying not to sell.”

Lots of people were on the roof, nobody knew what was happening. I kept on looking at the World Trade Center. There was an antenna, a huge antenna on top of the World Trade Center … 

“I could see everything from the windows. And I had no timt to close the windows. So the place got full of dust poison. Five months later I was paralysed on the left side. Because of that.”

Have you sold any of the 9/ll paintings?

“Well, you know I’ve been trying not to sell. To hold onto them and put them into a museum. That would hold the shit that I do.”

“When the second plane hit. I thought we were at war. At that moment I changed my mind and didn’t leave. But everybody else left!”

A lot of money … money and party … and all that crowd disappeared. Never to come back. That was collateral damage!

“The second plane hit. I thought we were at war. At that moment I changed my mind and didn’t leave. But everybody else left!”

You were thinking of leaving?

“I was trying to avoid the possible collapse of the building this way.

The Russian theory What happened is the buildings fell down so fast that you cannot believe it.”   

Did he see people falling?

“Oh yeah! Lots of them. Not one or two.” Lots of people were on the roof, nobody knew what was happening. I kept on looking at the World Trade Center. There was an antenna, a huge antenna on top of the World Trade Center … 

“I could see everything from the windows. And I had no timt to close the windows. So the place got full of dust poison. Five months later I was paralysed on the left side. Because of that.”

Have you sold any of the 9/ll paintings?

“Well, you know I’ve been trying not to sell. To hold onto them and put them into a museum. That would hold the shit that I do.”

“Because it was very heavy” he said. Also right beneath were quarters occupied, he said, by the secret service. Which, he said, was “full of dangerous chemicals”

Salvador Rosillo, Semi-Figuration.

So you thought the antenna might hit that?

“Yeah! Definitely. And that would send the fire burning all the way to 57^th Street. According to the experts, not me!”

People were saying tthat it is going to burn al the way to 57^th Street

The second plane hit the second building. But it hit it lower in a better position for the building to collapse

Because the first plane hit very high up. Only twenty feet from the top so the building took longer to collapse”

Why did you look at the antenna?

“Because it’s very heavy,” he said. He thought it mght hit the whuch was “full of dangerous chemicals”

So you thought the antenna might hit the secret service?

“Yeah! Definitely. And that would send the fire burning all the way to 57^th Street. According to the experts, not me!”

 “There was a second plane which came from the South. The ball of fire, it was big. What happened is the buildings fell down so fast that you cannot believe it.”

Did he see people falling?

“Oh yeah! Lots of them. Not one or two. Lots of people were on the roof, nobody knew what was happening. I kept on looking at the World Trade Center. There was an antenna, a huge antenna on top of the World Trade Center …

“I could see everything from the windows. And I had no timt to close the windows. So the place got full of dust poison.Five months later I was paralysed on the left side. Because of that.”

“I had portraits of Bin Laden, all of them. But I was so traumatised by the event that I could not paint anything except 911 for more that two years So I have a lot of 911s.” WM