El Museo de Las Américas [The Museum of the Americas] invites you to the opening of “Axis Mundi,” a solo exhibition by Rafael Trelles that “connects us with the symbolic power of the tree and the transformation of color.” The exhibition opens on Thursday, November 20, 2025, at 6:00pm, at Room 4, El Museo de Las Américas (located at Cuartel de Ballajá, Beneficencia Street, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico). It will remain on view until March 2026.
Description: After a five-year from exhibiting his work on the island [Puerto Rico], artist Rafael Trelles presents a new exhibition of paintings at the Museum of the Americas. The show, titled Axis Mundi, is the second part of a similar exhibition presented in 2021 at the October Gallery in London.
The collection of twelve oil paintings focuses on the theme of the tree as a mythological figure and offers the opportunity to appreciate works created by Trelles between 2020 and 2025. Regarding Trelles’s work, philosopher Francisco José Ramos comments:
“In the work of the master Rafael Trelles, the most diverse artistic legacies are embodied in a laborious and playful style that fuses figurative precision with the meditative features of abstraction. An immersive adventure with the dance of colors blends forms with their contours and the design of soft, attentive, erotic, melodic lines. Everything is literally intertwined with the joyful configuration of solemn pictorial figures. From wherever it may originate, an offering appears, the seed of a transformation.”
Rafael Trelles (1957) is a painter and multidisciplinary artist. He has presented more than 40 solo exhibitions and participated in more than 100 group exhibitions in Puerto Rico, the United States, Latin America, and Europe. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Puerto Rico and completed postgraduate studies at the San Carlos Academy of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His works are found in numerous public and private collections, including major museums in Puerto Rico, the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, the Rollins Museum in Orlando, Florida, Casa de las Américas in Cuba, and the Library of Congress. He has been recognized by the International Association of Art Critics, Puerto Rico Chapter, the National Fund for the Financing of Cultural Activities of Puerto Rico, the Ricardo Alegría Foundation’s Medal of Culture, and two first prizes in the Sin Nombre magazine competition. He is the author of two poetry books and numerous essays, articles, and art reviews. In 2019, he was appointed a full member of the Puerto Rican Academy of the Spanish Language. He is currently represented in Europe by the October Gallery in London and by L’Artban in the USA.
For more information, see https://www.museolasamericas.org/axis-mundi/