Born in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1927, Rodolfo (Rudy) Ayoroa was a formally trained artist whose skills and vision allowed him to excel both in the nature inspired field of traditional realism as well as to participate in the early years of the futuristic Kinetic art movement which emerged in the late 1950’s.
Growing up in Bolivia, Mr. Ayoroa demonstrated a precocious gift for skilled realistic renderings rivaling those of the camera. Cecilio Guzman de Rojas, (1899-1950) a well known Bolivian artist lived in Mr. Ayoroa’s home.  Ayoroa’s earliest memories of art inspiration were from watching Mr. Guzman de Rojas paint. Ayoroa was a just a child when he began experimenting with color and created beautiful renderings for his grandmother. His family, recognizing these unusual talents, sent him to Argentina in 1960 where he studied architecture at the National University of Buenos Aires. His passion for painting and sculpture led him to an apprenticeship with some of the leading artists of the time, including Lino Enea Spilimbergo (d. 1964) and Vicente Puig (d.1965) who had worked with Salvador Dali, another master draftsman whose visions and prodigious talents allowed his art to embrace both traditional realism along with many amazing surrealistic interpretations.

Mr. Ayoroa moved to Washington D.C. in 1965 where the Washington color school was emerging locally and at the same time the broader field of kinetic art was developing internationally. Ayoroa began to explore color, light and movement through the medium of Plexiglas and motors. Without abandoning sculpture, in the early 1970’s, he began to work in the field of printmaking and later turned again to painting. Throughout his work, there was a continuity of concept in the expression of movement and space, with color playing the dominant role.

His early kinetic work is related to the kinetic movements of the late 50’s and 60’s and he was a friend of Carlo Cruz-Diaz, a major figure in the Latin Kinetic art world along with Venezuelan Kinetic Artists Jesus Rafael Soto and Alejandro Otero.

While he continued with kinetic interpretations throughout his career, later on he was to find opportunities to work with both sculpture and painting revealing his long obscured talent as a master draftsman. During these later years he created masterful full sized sculptures of civil war figures along with paintings and drawings of civil war battles and related subjects.

A section of the Danville Kentucky Public Library contains a tribute to his work over the years.