NEW BRITAIN, CT.- The New Britain Museum of American Art announced the recent acquisition of Rogelio Báez Vega’s recent painting, The Country Club, from the Construct of a No-Country series, 2024.

“As a leading artist living and working in Puerto Rico, Báez Vega addresses the perceptions and misconceptions many Americans have of the Island,” says Stephanie Mayer Heydt, Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the NBMAA. “His work offers a layered perspective on the effects of American presence and divestment in Puerto Rico over generations. The gilded glow of the tourist industry and the devastation that belies it—the paintings are stunning alignments of beauty and decay.”

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Rogelio Báez Vega is recognized for his visually striking paintings that address the island's colonial status, built landscape, and modern architecture. His luminous canvases, which often incorporate shimmering gold pigment, reference the island’s rapid industrialization process during the mid-century and the construction of the commonwealth as an idealized “nation/state.” His most recent series Construct for a No-Country explores the interior spaces of modern buildings in Puerto Rico—both real and imagined—from the 1950s to today. According to Báez Vega, this series highlights “the spaces and urban planning projects in the country, such as universities, hospitals, and social housing, which were designed to project a false image of progress and modernization in Puerto Rico… In my intention to exaggerate the environments of tropical fiction, I am constantly amazed by the reality that surpasses fiction in my paintings.”

Among the largest and most significant work in this series, The Country Club, 2024, depicts a country club pool, overgrown by palm trees and shrubs. The number “1898” can be seen articulated in the pool tiles—a reference to the beginning of America’s occupation of Puerto Rico following the Spanish-American war and the military significance of the island. This work dramatizes one of the many military bases established by the United States Army in Puerto Rico following its invasion and the ensuing colonial relationship that persists to this day. Drawing on the recreational spaces of the Country Club at Ramey Air Force Base—and through a fictional lens—the artist amplifies the surrounding natural landscape, condensing it into the interior of the swimming pool once used by the military for leisure and entertainment. This gesture serves as a hyperbole, highlighting the indiscriminate exploitation of the Puerto Rican territory and the ongoing violation of its coastal environments. By over-exoticizing both the landscape and its architecture, the artist seeks to examine how structures of power reshape not only the physical terrain but also the colonial mentality embedded within it.

The island’s architecture is as pivotal to the artist’s subject as it is to his process. He remarks: “I feel that my work is constructed almost like a laborer builds a structure, rather than simply being painted… I draw upon knowledge gained from the trades I’ve learned to survive, such as cabinetry, masonry, and real estate construction, which have helped me reinvent the way I apply my own painting to the canvas… My approach and development of the work also somewhat emulate the way of constructing a model or studying architecture. All of this allows me to create a diversity of marks that are not widely recognized within traditional plastic arts.”