Edel Rodriguez

Edel Rodriguez (born August 22, 1971, in Havana, Cuba) is a Cuban American artist, illustrator, and children's book author.

Throughout his career, Rodriguez has utilized a variety of artistic media including paint, printmaking, pastel, line drawing as well as digital manipulation.

[11] The cover image, portraying a woman with her skirt being lifted up by a computer cursor created controversy,[12] with some calling it a faceless and sexualized symbol of women.

[23] For the February 4, 2017, issue of Der Spiegel, Rodriguez's cover image depicting President Donald Trump holding the Statue of Liberty's severed head in one hand and a knife in the other, with the cover title America First[24] generated news coverage in such publications as The Washington Post,[25] The Guardian,[26] Newsweek[27] and other news outlets.

The cover image was described as tasteless by vice-president of the European Parliament, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff[28] and defended by Der Spiegel editor-in-chief Klaus Brinkbaeumer, who commented that he was surprised by the impact of the illustration.

[26] The August 28th, 2017 issue of Time, titled Hate in America, focused on a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia,[29] that resulted in the death of 2 police officers and a 32-year-old women.

An upcoming U2 tour, eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE, was still being developed at that time and Rodriguez was brought in to create 40 works of art that would be shown prominently during the pre-show and prior to the second act of the performance.

Works produced for this event also covered social issues such as immigration, gun violence, and free speech with signs that read, "Refugees Welcome", and "Fight Back!".