Alberto Rey (born 7 August 1960) is a Cuban-American painter, illustrator, and filmmaker whose work explores bicultural identity, environmental conservation, and natural history. His art is held in several permanent collections, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Brooklyn Museum, El Museo del Barrio, and the Museum of Latin American Art.
Rey is a distinguished professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Fredonia. In 2012, he was inducted into the Burchfield Penney Art Center's Living Legacy Project. He is also a conservationist and angler who founded a regional youth fly-fishing program and has contributed illustrations to fishing journals.
Early life and education Rey was born in Agramonte, Cuba, in 1960 to a criollo family. In 1963, his parents brought him to Mexico seeking political asylum before relocating to Little Havana in Miami, Florida, in 1965 and settling in Barnesboro, Pennsylvania, in 1967. His father, who held a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Havana, worked as a Spanish teacher. As a child, Rey developed an interest in art by copying album covers and drawings from Mad magazine.
Rey attended the Art Institute of Pittsburgh before earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1982. He completed a Master of Fine Arts in drawing and painting at the University at Buffalo in 1987.
Career His abstract period of work from 1982 to 1992 involved layering Cuban iconography with his American experiences, symbolizing the struggles of fleeting memories and the romanticization of cultural identity.
In 1982, Rey returned to Miami and assisted with the Surrounded Islands Project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, an environmental art installation that surrounded eleven islands with pink fabric for two weeks. That same year, the Burchfield Penney Art Center inducted his mixed-media work "Holy Angels Church and Chair" into its permanent collection.
In 1988, Rey began teaching at high schools and colleges while taking classes in contemporary art and environmental studies at Harvard University. Soon after, Rey's work was acquired by El Museo del Barrio's permanent collection, and he held his first solo New York City exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art.
Rey relocated to Fredonia, New York, in 1989 to become a professor at the State University of New York. He was later named a SUNY Distinguished Professor for Research and Creativity in 2007.
From 1992 to 1999, Rey's work became being perceived as more representational as he investigated his Cuban culture, including its religion, food, politics, and relationship to American society. In 1991, the Burchfield Penney Arts Center collected a second painting by Rey entitled "Binary Forms: Floating Between." By 1992, his work had entered the collections of several major museums, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art ("Las Palmas Son Novias Que Esperan (The Palms Are Lovers Who Wait)"), the Bronx Museum of Art, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery ("Binary Forms: XXI" and "Post-nuptial Gold: Time").
In 1996, Rey became curator and director of the Chautauqua Institution's Center of the Visual Arts. After 1999, an increased interest in art history, ecology, and environmental conservation led Rey to incorporate greater environmental realism into his work, as seen in his series "Biological Regionalism", which was later exhibited in 2014 at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. From 2000 to the present, his work has explored the history of angling art, environmentalism, urban migration, and biology.
Rey is the founder and director of the Children in the Stream Youth Fly Fishing Program, which provides children with education in environmental conservation. In 2006, Rey founded the Canadaway Creek Conservation Project, an annual stream clean-up initiative; he also established the Brook Trout Restoration Project, which teaches low- and middle-income children how to reintroduce brook trout into local waterways.
In 2022, in partnership with the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, Rey and designer Jason Dilworth created a publication capturing a week-long summer youth practicum in Colorado. The program brought together high school students from nine tribes for leadership, outdoor learning, and cultural activities. Rey taught drawing, stream biology, and fly fishing.Rey's art has been featured in more than 200 exhibitions.
Works
ATLAS: Historical Work and Recent Journeys of Alberto Rey (2024–25)
In 2025, Rey presented more than 130 paintings and sketchbooks in his installation "ATLAS" at the Marion Art Gallery at SUNY Fredonia. The work was inspired by his five-month journey around the world. "ATLAS" marked Rey's first exhibition after retiring as a distinguished professor at the institution. The show also included dozens of works spanning his career from 1992 to 2022.
Critical Endangered Palms of Cuba (2021-2022)
Inspired by Paul Craft's catalog "The Palms of Cuba," this series examines endangered palm species threatened by erosion, agricultural, and natural disasters. The works combine ceramic forms with mapped species locations, continuing Rey's conservation-focused engagement with Cuban landscapes.
Canadaway Creek - Western New York (2021)
A collaborative project with SUNY Fredonia faculty, students, and community members, and supported by the Costello Interplay Award for Science and the Arts, this book documents the Canadaway Creek's history, ecology, and environmental challenges while promoting local environmental stewardship.
Lost Beauty Project (since 2019)
Rey's Lost Beauty project documents fragile natural and cultural environments affected by climate change and human intervention. Part I, presented in collaboration with the Buffalo Museum of Science at the Anderson Gallery, University at Buffalo, in fall 2019, combined paintings and ceramics with audio, video, and scientific specimens from Rey's Extinct Birds Project, documenting the histories of 18 extinct bird species.
The Icebergs series focuses on Iceland's Jökulsárlón glacial region and was published as a book in 2021; works from the series were exhibited in Life Streams: Alberto Rey, Cuban-American Artist at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. In 2021, Rey also became the first artist commissioned by the Buffalo Museum of Science, creating a site-specific exhibition pairing large-scale paintings with previously unseen museum artifacts.
Extinct Birds Project (2016-2019)
In 2018, Rey published Extinct Birds Project, documenting the histories of 17 extinct bird species represented by specimens held at the Roger Tory Institute of Natural History and Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. The accompanying exhibition opened in August 2018 at the Roger Tory Institute, featuring paintings alongside rare archival audio and video materials.
The project later formed the basis of Rey's Lost Beauty exhibitions, developed in collaboration with the Buffalo Museum of Science and the Anderson Gallery, University at Buffalo, beginning in 2019 and continuing with a site-specific installation at the Buffalo Museum of Science in 2021.
Biological Regionalism (since 2005) Rey's Biological Regionalism series examines local aquatic ecosystems, combining art with scientific data to promote environmental awareness and conservation. Influenced by naturalist artists such as Winslow Homer and John James Audubon, the project integrates paintings and video with field research, maps, and environmental samples to explore natural beauty and human impact on aquatic environments. Rey's most recent installation, Biological Regionalism: Niagara River, was displayed at the Castellani Art Museum in 2023. In large-scale paintings, he explored the complex past of the Niagara River, from pollution to the Underground Railroad to Native American heritage.
Other major installations in this series include:
Battenkill, Vermont, USA (2021-2023) at the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum, Southern Vermont Art Center Oswego River and Lake Ontario, Central New York, USA (2019-2022) at SUNY Oswego's Tyler Gallery Scajaquada Creek (2014) at the Burchfield Penney Art Center Ellicott Creek (2010) at the University at Buffalo Art Gallery
Bagmati River Art Project Series (2014–2016)
In 2016, Rey wrote and illustrated a book about his project in Kathmandu, Nepal, titled Complexities of Water: Biological Regionalism: Bagmati River, Kathmandu Valley, Nepal, with SUNY Fredonia colleague and graphic designer Jason Dilworth. The project's exhibition opened on 20 November at the Siddhartha Art Gallery at Barbar Mahal Revisited in Kathmandu, featuring fourteen paintings, water samples, the documentary "BAGMATI", and artwork by Nepalese artists. The project also collected scientific data on water quality, pollution, human impact, climate change, and strategies to improve the health of the Bagmati river, while informing neighboring communities about conservation methods.
The Aesthetics of Death Series (2006–2016)
Moved by the passing of his sister, Mayda, and his father-in-law, Neil Strong, Rey's series confronted death directly by depicting sick, dying, and deceased steelhead fish. The paintings themselves used bright colors and gestural brushwork to contrast the starkness of death with the temporary brilliance of life. The viewers look down at the fish from above against a flat, muted background, highlighting the overall shape of the subject. Though the life of a dead fish may initially seem insignificant to a viewer, the large scale of the paintings turns each fish into a monument, capturing an unrepeatable moment for future study, appreciation, and contemplation.Denaci, Mark. Engaging Ambivalence: Alberto Rey's The Aesthetics of Death in Alberto Rey: Life, Death and Beauty, exh. cat. (Lexington, Virginia: Staniar Gallery, Washington and Lee University, 2009).
Trout Encounters Series (2000–2004)
Returning to the United States after visiting Cuba in 1998 for the first time in over 30 years signaled a thematic change for Rey, creating work that investigated other aspects of his identity beyond his Cuban heritage, including his passion for environmental conservation and researching art history. Akin to the Hudson River School artists who presented the general public with sweeping landscapes and depictions of wilderness, Rey's Trout Encounters brought together two worlds: the underwater world of regionally-specific trout species and the increasingly urbanized communities of people disconnected from their surroundings.
Studio Retablos Series (1998–2000)
This series combines several disciplines including the art history of America, Italy, Mexico, and Spain, as well as biology, pop culture, postmodernism, and politics. As he traveled for the previous 25 years collecting imagery and discarded paintings by amateur artists, Rey wanted to give these abandoned works new life. This series revitalized the old paintings by removing layers of their original paint and adding new layers of imagery from Rey's travels.
Cuban Portraits Series (1998–1999)
Rey described the inspiration behind the series as the Mexican portrait painter Hermenegildo Bustos (1832 – 1907) as Bustos portraits visually cataloged an ethnic group people in a moment of their history. Rey's series depicts both Cubans living in Cuba and Cubans living in the United States with an emphasis on character, social and economic class, and ethnic identity.
Las Balsas (The Rafts) Series (1995-1999)