Rude Calderón was born in San Jose, Costa Rica, where he spent the first seven years of his life. His family immigrated with him to Los Angeles, California in 1964 where he has remained all his life. Rude’s father apprenticed and worked in his uncle Manuel Zuñiga’s sculpture studio, creating religious sculpture in the Spanish baroque tradition. His deep respect for materials and craftsmanship is rooted in this family history.

Stone sculpture is at the center of Rude Calderón’s artistic work, the past fifteen years have been largely devoted to this medium. His artworks show a reverence towards the handling and natural appearance of materials that infer the omnipresent mystery of nature. The latest public art commission awarded by the City of Laguna Beach to him and his team collaborator, Roberto Delgado, was installed in June of 2016. The City of Burbank also awarded them, a public art sculpture proposal, installed in Songdo Central Park, Incheon, South Korea, in November of 2015, as part of a sister city art exchange program. Rude Calderón‘s first public art commission from 2004, is titled: ‘Leaping Fish, Nature’s Cycles’, a two piece site-specific sculpture executed out of New Mexico travertine, awarded to him by Los Angeles County Arts Commission, at Belvedere Park Lake as part of the East Los Angeles Civic Center Renovation Project. This work beckons the viewer to circle the lake and the sculptures, thus embracing one in its narrative cycle of renewal. His private commission sculptures are approached with the same vision of dynamic integration that allows the natural force imprinted into the stone through millenniums, to inform the form and spirit of the idea. Ever-unfolding consciousness and the energies that drive our physical and inner world are a source of great interest and inspiration in his work.