George Rodrigue is an artist who became famous in the 1990s with his blue dog motif. He achieved world fame with the promotional poster he designed for the Swedish vodka Absolut in 1992. He designed the blue dog after his dog Tiffany. He drew inspiration for the creation from the Creole legend of Loup garou, which tells of a werewolf that is said to be hiding in the swampy landscape of southern Louisiana.
The swampy landscape of the American state of Louisiana strongly influenced the beginnings of Rodrigue's work. Studying in Los Angeles instilled in him homesickness and a desire to perform motifs from the rural areas of Louisiana. In the first parts, the dominant motif is dark landscapes dominated by oaks overgrown with moss. Like many other great artists, Rodrigue was not appreciated in the beginning. Critics found the motifs of the rural landscape too dark and monotonous. Things changed when in 1974 he was the only American to be honored at the prestigious Paris exhibition Le Salon.
The motif of the blue dog is Rodrigue first painted as an illustration for a series of horror stories about the myths and legends of the American South. The stories were mainly about the werewolf (fr. loup garou), so he decided that the main illustration in the book would be a dog. The illustration was set at night, so he painted the dog standing in the moonlight blue. In 1992, he achieved world fame with the help of Absolut vodka. He followed famous artists such as Andy Warhol and Hans Godo Frabel and created a promotional poster featuring a blue dog. In the later years of his work, he placed the blue dog in the environment of the swampy landscapes of the American South, thus combining his most famous motifs. In 2013, George Rodrigue died, but his Blue dog lives on.
