Lope Max Díaz

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The content and subject matter of my paintings emanates from autobiographical constructs. With them, I also explore formal and conceptual issues in painting and art history that are of my interest. The physicality of the materials used responds to the narrative that is being constructed; some sort of cause-effect relationship is established. The materials become active participants of the visual discourse that is unfolding in the painting. The compositions are a continuous tension between the formal and the informal, the static and the dynamic. Color carries the load of my expressive being, with it I give tangibility to my feelings, emotions, and craves.

Lope Max Díaz-Rivera was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, on December 13, 1943. At the age of two my parents, sister, and I moved to New York City, where I went to elementary school and began middle school. In 1956 we returned to Puerto Rico, now a family of eight: five sisters, my parents, and I. Upon our return I finished middle school, high school, and university studies where I majored in Fine Arts and graduated with a BA in Humanities from the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras in 1966. In 1971 I obtained an MA in Art Education from the graduate school at Hunter College, CUNY, and returned to Puerto Rico. A few years later I began teaching art and design in the Fine Arts Department and at the School of Architecture of the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. In 1988 I moved to Raleigh, North Carolina where I had accepted a faculty member position in the College of Design at NC State University. In 2009, and after a teaching career, in PR and NC, of 41 years in the classroom, I retired from the College of Design of NCSU. Throughout the years, since 1966, I have had an art studio and have continued to be an active and productive professional visual artist.