Partir Antes del Día was started by Rodón in 1965 and belongs to a very small group of paintings inspired by the sea. This work in particular depicts the same location and the same model as another painting entitled "Alisios". Although thematic purpose, time and subject render a few similarities between the two works, it is in Partir Antes del Día that the artist achieves not only a strong, yet poetic statement in visual terms, but also a metaphoric vision of his island, his sea, and nature. This painting is a major work from this period. Its unconventionality rests in the fact that it exemplifies the artist's search of perceiving meaning not as a common sensitive moment, not even as an emotional experience but through personal symbolism much in accordance with magic-realism, the mainstream movement that exemplified Latin American art and literature in the sixties.
Francisco J. Barrenechea
San Juan, March, 1994