Painter and printmaker · 1947-2022
Painter and printmaker
Pilar Rodiles Escudero was a painter and printmaker born in Tetouan in 1947. She died in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on 6 November 2022. Living in Gran Canaria from 1969, she developed work connecting North Africa, Andalusia and the Canary Islands, with attention to abstraction, collage and social critique.
Pilar Rodiles spent her childhood in Tetouan and studied drawing at that city's school of Fine Arts. She later completed her training in Seville, earning a diploma in Art and Artistic Crafts and a specialisation in Interior Design in 1971. From 1969 she lived in Gran Canaria, where she developed most of her activity while retaining cultural references to North Africa and Andalusia.
Her work encompassed painting, collage and printmaking. The CAAM notes that she treated printmaking not merely as reproduction but as a means of expression; the versatility of the print allowed her to fold, cut, reintegrate or unfold images. In her abstract and material series, and in projects such as Megalópolis and Mujeres de porcelana, she investigated the city, memory, women's condition and social inequalities.
She held solo exhibitions in the Canary Islands and Andalusian cities, and took part in group exhibitions within and beyond the archipelago. She received the Ybarra 92 International Painting Prize and first prize at the 2008 Gran Canaria International Graphic Art Competition. Her connection with Artemisia. Mujeres+Arte located her practice within cultural activism demanding greater presence and recognition for women creators.
