Overview
Intimate exploration of Devon’s troubled history and how art and key people saved his life.
Growing up in the South Bronx, Devon Rodriguez felt invisible. Irrelevant. All the while, he lived in constant fear that his tumultuous home life would be exposed. Even something as simple as an assignment at school to draw his family tree, the kind of art project he would have loved, risked revealing family secrets he guarded fiercely—the cramped apartment he lived in with his abusive mother and stepfather, the strangers who cycled through buying and selling drugs, his estranged father, the empty cabinets in the kitchen.
Little did Devon know that his love of art would ultimately be his salvation, allowing him to draw a roadmap to a life he couldn’t conceive during those darkest days. Today, Devon Rodriguez is the most followed visual artist in the world. He is also among the first artists to make the herculean leap from social media into the rarified world of fine art. In September he wrapped his first solo gallery show entitled Underground featuring a dozen hyper-realistic oil painting.
The name, an obvious descriptor for the paintings featuring everyday people on their subway commutes, also reflects the way Devon has felt as an artist until now. A sense that his upbringing precluded him from this gatekept world. On opening night, the NYPD had to shut down the streets surrounding the gallery because thousands of people answered Devon’s call for support. The line stretched six city blocks through Chelsea, filled not only with New Yorkers, but people from all over the world, who had flown in to see him.
Growing up in the South Bronx, Devon Rodriguez felt invisible. Irrelevant. All the while, he lived in constant fear that his tumultuous home life would be exposed. Even something as simple as an assignment at school to draw his family tree, the kind of art project he would have loved, risked revealing family secrets he guarded fiercely—the cramped apartment he lived in with his abusive mother and stepfather, the strangers who cycled through buying and selling drugs, his estranged father, the empty cabinets in the kitchen.
Little did Devon know that his love of art would ultimately be his salvation, allowing him to draw a roadmap to a life he couldn’t conceive during those darkest days. Today, Devon Rodriguez is the most followed visual artist in the world. He is also among the first artists to make the herculean leap from social media into the rarified world of fine art. In September he wrapped his first solo gallery show entitled Underground featuring a dozen hyper-realistic oil painting.
The name, an obvious descriptor for the paintings featuring everyday people on their subway commutes, also reflects the way Devon has felt as an artist until now. A sense that his upbringing precluded him from this gatekept world. On opening night, the NYPD had to shut down the streets surrounding the gallery because thousands of people answered Devon’s call for support. The line stretched six city blocks through Chelsea, filled not only with New Yorkers, but people from all over the world, who had flown in to see him.
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