GEORGE RODRIGUE (1944-2013)
Blue Dog
Print in Colors
7 1/4" x 11"
George Rodrigue was an American painter known for his iconic and long-running Blue Dog series of paintings. Beginning in the late 1980s, Rodrigue painted a reoccurring character of a blue dog with yellow eyes, always in the same pose but placed in a variety of settings. The character became a popular and well-known image outside of the art world, notably being featured in an Absolut Vodka advertising campaign. He was born on March 13, 1944 in New Iberia, LA and studied at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Early in his career, he became known for his Cajun-inspired paintings of landscapes, including the notable monochromatic Aioli Dinner (1971) which depicts a family seated at a long outdoor table in front of a plantation home. In 1975, he was awarded an Honorable Mention from Le Salon in Paris, and dubbed by the French newspaper Le Figaro as the â€Å“American Rousseau.â€Â The artist has also painted Cajun celebrities, such as Paul Prudhomme, and several US presidents, including George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. His work was the subject of a major retrospective at the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2008—he died on December 14, 2013 in Houston, TX.

Mounted