Qualified as the painter of the roosters, Mariano Rodriguez was one of the founders of the painting school of Havana and one of the most prestigious Cuban creators in this regard. He died in Havana on May 26, 1990.
He worked incessantly in the search for new forms of expression to translate, from a universal perspective, the Cuban school.
He was the last of the survivors of the great founders of the painting school in Havana.
He summarized in one sentence the meaning he attributed to painting, by saying: "Live and paint, paint and live."
Mariano was born on August 24, 1912. His full name was Jose Mariano Alvarez Rodriguez.
His maternal grandparents were Asturians and their parents of Canarian origin.
He felt a great love for Spain, a country he visited several times and where he felt at home.
He had a self-taught training as a painter.
First there was a short period of time at the San Alejandro school, which he abandoned because he did not adapt to the teaching methods of that institution.
Later he traveled to Mexico and came into direct contact with representatives of muralism, a movement that at that time represented the line of plastic and social liberation in Latin America.
Mexican muralism, due to its artistic content and its search for a renewal with intimately popular roots, greatly influenced its formation.
Mariano Rodríguez in 1937 returned to Cuba and worked with dedication.
He joined the group that with the famous painter Victor Manuel Garcia had emerged with the exhibition organized by the magazine Avances in 1927.
Some time later he managed to exhibit for the first time abroad and in 1943 in Cuba.
Thus he was placed in the group of founders of the painting school of Havana, along with other great artists, among them Amelia Peláez and René Portocarrero.
On how he conceived and worked his works, he once said: "Very easy, when a certain idea comes to my mind, I start to work. If I do not feel like painting, I make some drawings, a hand, a nose, a rooster, to keep me in shape. Drawing daily, when I get up or when I sit down to rest in my favorite chair. "
He created a diverse and comprehensive work, universal by Cuban. He was an eternal dissatisfied and almost never, as he stated on one occasion, considered a painting finished.
From this derives the fact that many times he avoided giving his signature to any work he created.
The image of the rooster exerted a great influence on him and about this he said: "When I am in a process of change as far as creation line is concerned, I paint a rooster. If it goes well, the change is positive, and if not, it is not favorable. "
Mariano Rodríguez painted until the last moments of his life. His indefatigable love for what he did, his hard work, his exceptional talent, have allowed us to receive, as a legacy, a vast work of his creation.

Another prominent Cuban intellectual, the poet and essayist Roberto Fernandez Retamar, highlighted in one of his works the transcendence and symbolism that the rooster had in the life and artistic creation of Mariano Rodríguez.
Precisely in a poem entitled Gallo con Flor, dedicated especially to Mariano Rodríguez, Fernández Retamar said:
  With the burst of the light of the aurora
  and the implacable midday on the sovereign ceiba,
  with the angry flags deployed in the demonstration,
  the wings of the rooster were made;
  With the rage accumulated for centuries
  of fuetes, mayorales, and imprecations,
  with the firm steps of the workers,
  the spurs of the rooster sprouted;
  with the fire of the people, with the fire
  of the bloody painful battles,
  they lit the rooster's eyes;
  they are the thunder of the crowd, with the shout of combat,
  the cock crowed.
  Everything was white, red, blue, orange.
  Then the victory came, they arrived
  the new millionaires, the schools, the tenderness,
  the violet arrived; the light green came.
  The rooster learned to live next to the flower.
 Among the most significant works of Mariano Rodríguez can be cited Nude, from the series Fruits and Reality, of 1970, symbol and transfiguration of the fruit life that surrounded it, The masses, of the 80s, more than an illustrative brushstroke of the Revolution, they are the human landscape of an ideology. His work La mujer en la sombrilla, in 1942, shows how he assumed the nature of Mexican muralism.
Mariano Rodríguez painted until the last moments of his life. His indefatigable love for what he did, his hard work, his exceptional talent, have allowed us to receive, as a legacy, a vast work of his creation. His collection of oil paintings, pastels and drawings remain as cultural heritage of our country.
He also served as Vice President and later President of the Casa de las Americas.
Mariano Rodriguez died in Havana on May 26, 1990.
He was described by some critics as a master par excellence of color. Graciela Pogoloti said about him that he was reminiscent of a sensuality that dominates the environment.