George Rodrigue (March 13, 1944 - December 14, 2013) is an American artist from New Iberia, Louisiana, who in the late 1960s began painting the Louisiana landscape, followed soon after by a family gathering outside and in the southwest. The jokes of the 19th and early 20th century genres. His paintings often include mossy oak trees, commonly found in the French Louisiana area known as Acadiana. In the mid-1990s the Blue Dog Rodrigue painting, based on a Cajun legend called loup-garou , catapulted it to worldwide fame.
The funeral mass is open to the public, held at St. Mary's Cathedral Louis at Jackson Square, New Orleans.
Video George Rodrigue
Biography
Rodrigue attends the College of Fraternity from a Christian School called St. Peter (now Catholic High School), located near St. Peter's Church, and near the edge of Bayou Teche through New Iberia. He formally studied art at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette (later named University of Southwestern Louisiana) and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He returned to Louisiana in the late 1960s, and became renowned for his interpretation of the subject and landscape of Cajun, which was inspired by its roots.
Rodrigue's famous early work included The Aioli Dinner, which divides her time between the New Orleans Art Museum and Ogden's Southern Art Museum, and Marie Courrege's Classroom, which won an honorable statement from Le Salon in Paris France, 1975, which prompted the French newspaper, Le Figaro, to dub Rodrigue "Rousseau America." His most famous works include Acadian heroine Evangeline, portrayed in epic poems Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" (1847), and the modern-day Cajun Evangeline, Jolie Blonde. He also designed three posters for New Orleans Jazz & amp; Heritage Festival, featuring portraits of Louis Armstrong, Pete Fountain, and Al Hirt. Between 1985 and 1989, Rodrigue painted the Saga of the Acadians, a series of fifteen paintings that recounted Acadian travel from France to Nova Scotia to Louisiana and ended with an official return visit to Grand Prà ©  ©.
Recently and worldwide he was known for the creation of a series of Blue Dog paintings, featuring a blue-colored dog. He used the shape and attitude of his deceased dog named Tiffany, and was mainly influenced by the legend of the loup-garou - the first painting in this series bearing the Watch Dog title, painted for Bayou , a Louisiana ghost book. The Blue Dog was made popular by Absolut Vodka in 1992, when Rodrigue was honored as an artist Absolut Vodka joining famous artists such as Andy Warhol and glass artist Hans Godo Frabel. The Blue Dog is used by Absolut Vodka and Xerox Corporation through national advertising campaigns The ghostly blue spaniel/terrier is often displayed with white noses and yellow eyes.
Rodrigue has a gallery in Carmel, California; Lafayette, Louisiana; and New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2007, Dixon Gallery and Gardens held a 40-year retrospective exhibition of Rodrigue, which traveled in 2008 to the New Orleans Art Museum. Rodrigue was awarded an honorary doctorate at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette on May 17, 2009. In 2011, Boy Scouts of America honored him with the Distinguished Eagle Award. In 2013 he received the Opus Award from the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
Beginning in 1984, Rodrigue was part of a large contingent of Edwin Edwards supporters who joined Edwards on a French and Belgian celebration tour. Each pays $ 10,000 to stop the remaining $ 4.2 million of campaign debt. Edwards had just scored his third term as governor of Louisiana by removing Republican David C. Treen. On the train in Paris, Rodrigue sketched his oak tree symbols on the menu of Edwards supporters, including Don Hathaway from Shreveport, then sheriff from Caddo Parish in northwest Louisiana.
In 2004, Rodrigue came to Shreveport with another Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco of Lafayette, with whom he performed at the Louisiana State Fair Museum, where he marked the Hathaway menu from over twenty years earlier.
Death
In October 2013, George and his wife Wendy told New Orleans Magazine that Rodrigue has been diagnosed in 2012 with stage 4 lung cancer and the tumor has spread throughout his body. Rodrigue believes it could be attributed to his spraying canvas with poisoned varnish in an unventilated studio early in his career. On December 14, 2013, Rodrigue died at the age of 69 years. Mass held on December 19th at St. Louis in New Orleans. Interment follows at Holy Family Cemetery in New Iberia. Rodrigue's surviving children are Jacques of New Orleans and Andre of Lafayette.
Rodrigue's work continued to increase after his death. In April 2015, Neil's Auction Company from New Orleans sold the painting the Blue Dog for $ 173,000. Rachel Weathers, director of painting and photography for the Neal Company, says that each work is unique but Rodrigue's artistic value has increased since his death.
Maps George Rodrigue
Response to Hurricane Katrina
Forced to move, Rodrigue temporarily moved his operating base to Lafayette. A few days after the disaster, he created the We Will Rise Again, which depicts a water-covered American flag, to benefit Red Cross in response to Hurricane Katrina and floods in New Orleans. "The Blue Dog is partially submerged, and its eyes, usually yellow, red with a broken heart," Rodrigue wrote in September 2005. "Like a ship S.O.S., the red cross on the dog's chest calls for help."
"We Will Rise Again" is the first of five works recognized by renowned artists for his new initiative, Blue Dog Relief: the George Rodrigue Art Campaign for Recovery. To benefit directly from the New Orleans Museum of Art, which was closed for six months due to flood damage, he also painted Throw Me Something FEMA and You Can not Drown the Blues.
After the release, Rodrigue launched a campaign for the protection of the New Orleans embankment. He sent a fingerprint of To Stay Alive We Need Levee 5 to every member of the US Congress. Sales proceeds from silkscreen prints and related campaign materials - including T-shirts, lapel pins, stickers and bumper buttons - donated to NOMA.
Rodrigue contributed the United Way's Cut Through the Red Tape image for use in promoting the Louisiana 2-1-1 phone system. Louisiana 2-1-1 (Memorable information & reference phone number) seeks to remove barriers to reaching human services agencies - especially in the midst of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
As of September 2006, donation contributions to Blue Dog Relief beneficiaries were $ 700,000, including the $ 100,000 check Rodrigue presented to NOMA on March 3, 2006, to help start the reopening: "Heart of New Orleans," a three-day weekend art celebration.
The George Rodrigue Art Foundation
Source of the article : Wikipedia