Across Time

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

CUBAN ARTISTS ... from vanguardist to contemporaries

Kendall Art Center depository house for

About the concept of art and collecting in our times

By Roxana Martínez Bermejo

I have spent several years trying to capture the concept of “Art” as a whole. I have never been able to. There are always areas that escape me, intelligible ideas that exceed the limits of my research, however extensive it may be. Perhaps for that reason, I have had to accept, little by little, what others had already coined before: “a picture is worth a thousand words.” However, after all is said and done, I have also been shown that humans are conceptual, idiomatic beings, who like to understand and synthesize everything that surrounds them. Hence, if it were necessary to find an accepted definition for art, it would coincide, on my horizon of expectations, with George Dickie’s “Institutional Theory,” according to which (and above all in contrast to modern and contemporary production)

a piece of art is an artistic work if, and only if, it belongs to the “World of Art” (galleries, museums, academies, culturally legitimate institutions). In this space, with its limited and elitist nature, different entities come into play that can define, promote or censure advancement, diffusion, reception, or the value of a piece of art and its artist. One of the main characters to be found within this nobiliary group is the art collector.

The latter could be defined over a hundred pages or in a single line: the work, with its inflated rate of exchange, if collected appears to be a great investment.

Behind every great artist there is usually a sponsoring patron: Sandro Botticelli and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Caravaggio and Cardinal Francesco del Monte, Gustave Courbet and Alfred Bruyas, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein, Jackson Pollock and Peggy Guggenheim.... This has continued into the present, with more familiar names such as: Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, Jorge Pérez, Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, Rubell, Margulie and others, who redirect and transform the fabric of contemporary art in our city. This list of collectors was recently joined by Leonardo Rodríguez, a Cuban living in Miami, who for almost thirty years has focused on safeguarding and supporting the artistic production of the island’s creators.

Leonardo Rodríguez Jr. Opening Kendall Art Center, July 15, 2016.

Rodríguez’s work as an “art collector” began in the complex nineties of the last century, still in his own country where he made his debut as an antique’s collector. From this stage, little by little, his taste changed towards the visual arts, given his interest in “authenticity and aura” which characterizes this production. In light of this, it is interesting to note that when Leonardo emigrated from Cuba, he brought precisely the twelve paintings that would become the genesis of what today is his treasure.

Once settled in Miami, this initially pruned collection (very limited with regard to the artworks that did not leave the island), is gradually nourished and begins to grow more vigorously, opening up to the multicultural environment that prevails in this North American city, without ceasing to favour its Cuban roots. Artists such as: René Portocarrero, Cundo Bermúdez, Pedro Pablo Oliva, Gina Pellón, Tomás Esson and Reynerio Tamayo join him and increase the list of artists he represents.. With this plurality of artists, who are all different in terms of themes and inclinations, I have asked myself on various occasions what exactly Leonardo Rodríguez is looking for when he selects a piece for his collection.

His hasty response has always been the same: “I need a transparent work that illustrates everything expressed by its artist,

Leonardo Rodríguez, Aldo Menéndez and Pedro Ávila.

Leonardo Rodríguez, Ciro Quintana, Ana Albertina , Adriano Buergo, Carlos Luna, Yourden Ricardo, Raul Proenza and Néstor Arenas.

that reflects the artist, although not literally.

I have no other way of understanding art, I cannot read it if it is not credible.”

However, it is important to clarify that Leonardo´s career as a collector has experienced a substantial leap in the last year due to a major event, not only for him and the artists at his side, but also for the artistic scene in general. This was the birth of the Kendall Art Center (KAC), who opened its doors to the public on July 15, 2016 and which, although still in its early years, already deserves a detailed introduction.

Angel Delgado and Leonardo Rodríguez.

Carol Damian, Píter Ortega, and Ángel Segundo.

The Kendall Art Center was created with the intention of bringing Rodríguez’s collection closer to the community. This purpose has been fulfilled throughout this time through different personal and collective exhibitions, where emerging and established artists find a space for fruitful and pleasant dialogue. Artists such as Sandra Ramos, Pedro Ávila, Lisyanet Rodríguez and Maikel Domínguez have all appeared there and left their imprint on the building´s white walls. In addition, each of these exhibitions have been accompanied by the presence of highly regarded names within the miami cultural network, such as: Janet Batet, Aldo Menéndez, Henry Ballate and Píter Ortega. These critics have set their sights on the visual arts production

that revolves around the KAC and have found in its rooms, space for debate in diverse activities. Such activities include book presentations, piano concerts and opera, guided tours for students and other interested parties, as well as the center’s participation in academic events such as the “Eleventh Conference on Cuban and Cuban-American Studies,” held at Florida International University (FIU).

Built atop these pillars, KAC has become – according to “The Miami Herald” – one of the best cultural offerings, not only in Kendall, which needed an initiative like this, but in the city of Miami as a whole.

Its foundation and the constant interaction with artists that have nurtured it, has meant that the Leonardo Rodríguez collection has grown by approximately 40%, refining its artists and moving towards a pluralist profile where, the work of the renowned artists on the island in the eighties is especially noteworthy in terms of its continuity and validity, and no longer as something static or archaeological. This approach can be seen with a mere look at the exhibitions that have been held in the center of the current work of Ciro Quintana, Ana Albertina, Pedro Vizcaíno and José Bedia. As an example, it is worth clarifying that the Rodríguez collection has doubled this year in terms of the number of artworks

Maikel Domínguez, Leonardo Rodríguez and Lisyanet Rodríguez.

Leonardo Rodríguez, Carlos Estévez, Nance Frank, Carlos Luna and Reynerio Tamayo.

by the aforementioned artist (José Bedia), one of the major names in the Cuban visual arts. This makes the Rodríguez collection one of the most vital sources for studying this painter, as it includes works such as “Chicomoztoc Tzotzompan Quinehuayan,” which was included in the first Havana Biennial in 1984.

Orlando Hernández, Arturo Cuenca, Leonardo Rodríguez and José Bedia.

Gary Anuez, Yourden Ricardo, Ocinay Echeverria, Rubén Torres Llorca, Dulce Agueda, Ileana Ferrera, Yeni Martínez, Carlos Luna and Leonardo Rodríguez.

At this point, I think it is also important to refer to the figure of Leonardo as a collector.

His modus operandi involves closeness and direct contact with the artist. He aims to find out the circumstances behind the creation, study it, learn from it and receive it from the author’s own hands whenever possible. Hence contemporary names predominate in his coffers and special value is given to fresh, living work that breathes....

His interest lies in giving way to creation without any kind of barriers. In this sense, the collection, which until now has been more focused on the so-called “fine arts,” has found with the creation of the KAC, a thriving place for other forms of expression such as photography, video art, installation and performance... We were fortunate to experience these forms of expression during the week of art basel, which are expected to become an even more active part in upcoming exhibitions at the center.

This is how the KAC of tomorrow is being shaped; not just as a gallery or a museum space to host Rodríguez’s collection, but as a living stage for the community, a vital source of reference for new and not so new generations. This only leaves me to express my gratitude, as any art lover would do, for an idea as vigorous, as promising and as strong as the Leonardo Rodríguez collection and his Kendall Art Center initiative. This first approach then may just be the starting point of its impact in the near future, which is always aimed at profiling new investigative, historiographical and creative routes.

Roxana M. Bermejo, Havana, 1992. Historian and art critic.

Graduated in Art History from the Faculty of Arts and Letters of La Universidad de La Habana. She works as a publisher of an academic journal with an independent profile ArtSôlido. Worthy for her book Bitácora del sujeto ausente, First International Novel of Poetry University Miguel Hernández Chair Miguel Hernandez University of Elche, Alicante (Spain, 2016). Participant in various national and international events, related to the Caribbean and Latin American culture.

Her texts have been published in spaces such as the magazine and Tabloid Artecubano, AMANO: Oficio & Diseño, FullFrame, Art OnCuba, and the digital film portal Cuba Now.

José Bedia and Henry Ballate assembling “Chicomoztoc Tzotzompan Quinehuayan,”

CUBAN ARTISTS in the Rodríguez Collection

Ángel Acosta Gustavo Acosta Néstor Arenas Pedro Ávila Henry Ballate José Bedia Cundo Bermúdez Adriano Buergo Ariel Cabrera Servando Cabrera Consuelo Castañeda Humberto Castro Hugo Consuegra Arturo Cuenca Ana Albertina Delgado Angel Delgado Maikel Domínguez Tomás Esson Carlos Estévez Ivonne Ferrer Joaquín Ferrer Guido Llinás Rogelio López Marín (Gory) Carlos Luna Manuel Mendive Aldo Menéndez José María Mijares Pedro de Oraá Pedro Pablo Oliva Gina Pellón Aimee Perez René Portocarrero Ciro Quintana Lisyanet Rodríguez Mariano Rodríguez Loló Soldevilla Reynerio Tamayo Rubén Torres Llorca José Villa Pedro Vizcaíno

16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92 94

ÁNGEL ACOSTA LEÓN

Ángel Acosta León (b. in Havana, Cuba 1930–1964) was a Cuban painter. His style owes much to surrealism, and expresses the pain he felt throughout much of his life. Animal, human and mechanical forms abound in his paintings, along with wheels, a reference to his lifelong fantasy of being a bus driver. His work has been compared to that of Wols. Leon was born on August 2, 1932 in the Buena Vista quarter of Havana, one of ten children of Angel Acosta Febles and Magdalena de Leon Hernandez. Leon attended the Catholic School for Poor Boys. In 1952, he entered the San Alejandro National School of Fine Arts, and graduated in 1958. His work was praised by the critics of his time who declared him “sensational” when he first exhibited in Europe. Salvador Dali and Roberto Matta were among his admirers and supporters.

“In general it can be stated that Acosta Leon breaks with the concept of Cubanness that had been crystallizing in previous generations .... He is the painter of the immediate , of the contingent, of objects that are dismantled and transformed .... This is no epic poem, because he does not process facts in terms of historical rationality, because he can never free himself from the objects he manufactures. They are too dear to him, because they are ambivalent. They are signs of a changing outside world, and at the same time, a necessary response to his intimate obsessions. But he has managed to leave us, in his brief transit, a valid poetic survey of the instants of indispensable destruction and birth, of anguish and of the un leashing of every creative force.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Acosta Leon y su recuento poético” by Graziella Pogolotti.

16

Ángel Acosta León, Carretilla, 1964, oil on canvas and board, 18 x 14.”

GUSTAVO ACOSTA

Gustavo Acosta (b. in Havana, Cuba). He attended the Superior Institute of Art (ISA), and the School of Visual Arts San Alejandro, both located in Havana, Cuba.

He currently lives and works in Miami, Florida, United States. Acosta’s work can be found in many private collections around the world, and institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA, in Miami, Florida, the Nassau County Museum of Art, in New York, and the National Museum of Fine Arts, in Havana, Cuba. Looking at Acosta’s trajectory, we can see how he has been portraying the different cities where he has lived, sometimes while living there and then again after having moved away. Acosta is an endogenous observer, he presents the cities as he sees them, and through the places he knew or passes by daily. There is always an emotional intensity behind Acosta’s artwork, partially reflected in the artist’s brush stroke and partially in the viewer’s interpretation according to his or her own experiences. Acosta’s pieces have the power of inciting all kinds of thoughts, perhaps because of their voids. The negative space works out as a positive one, and what is implicit becomes the most important part of the piece.

“Like a wave that keeps coming without end in Acosta’s works, inundating everything, engulfing the Malecón, repeated so many times in his canvasses, the fury of paint destroys everything, submerging it in an acrylic foam, in a mist that challenges the eye of the viewer, reminding him that observation is an act that requires commitment, responsibility and thoroughness. The frame of the painting is an insular border, the drawing an isolated territory, a physical and conceptual limit. Under the passionate appearance of these images, the drawing predefines the pictorial space with mathematical and geometric precision, as a rational exercise that translates the vision of the world to immediately allow it to be ripped out, dilacerated by a need to paint that angrily spits on all mimetic atavism. The pictorial gesture becomes a mnemotecnic procedure, a mechanistic movement of the hand on the support that slips. First the line, the drawing, and later the storm of movement as a way to express with a stain.”

18

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Through the eyes of Ulysses” by Suset Sánchez.

Gustavo Acosta, Cualquier día tiene un nombre, 2016, oil on canvas, 51 x 64.”

NÉSTOR ARENAS

Néstor Arenas (b. Holguín, Cuba, 1964). He graduated from the Higher Institute of Art (Havana, 1990). Arenas has widely exhibited his work at solo exhibitions and group shows throughout the U.S., Cuba, Spain and China. Recent exhibitions include: 12th Havana Biennial (2015), “Legopaintings” (Lyle O’Reitzel Gallery, Miami, 2010), Arteaméricas Art Fair (Miami, 2009 and 2010), and Shanghai Art Fair (China, 2010). His work is part of several private and corporate collections such as: Forrest Capital (Miami), The Mosquera Collection (Miami), Jorge Reynardus Collection (New York and Sarasota), Leigh University (Pennsylvania), The Rodríguez Collection (Miami), and Universidad de Valencia (Spain), among others.

“When the work of Arenas is seen in perspective, a warning must be made on the pronounced iconographic trajectory. An iconography deeply tangled with the history he personally lived in Cuba, as much as the one he had to live through outside of. His landscapes, neo-figurative and abstract at the same time, project visions where the historical and the personal biography cohabitate. The same way in which he presents the capitalist world. “As I mentioned previously the work of Arenas submerges us in an imagination where memories are smelted, our drives and our desires. That which we have obtained, also, everything that we have lost. Losses and gains that return to us with the appearance of things and personal belongings and at the same time phantasmagorical. ” Fragment retrieved from the essay “Landscape, abstraction and syntax of the utopia” by Dennys Matos.

20

NÊstor Arenas, Legopainting IV, 2011, oil on canvas 76 x 78.�

PEDRO ÁVILA GENDIS

Pedro Avila Gendis (b. Camaguey, Cuba). He graduated in Fine Arts at Ignacio Agramonte Cultural Center (Camaguey, 1975). He has exhibited his work in Miami, Los Angeles, Wien, Havana, Lisbon, Madrid, San Salvador, and Buenos Aires, among other cities. His work is part of several public art projects located at the University of Havana, Faro City (Portugal), Marina Hemingway (Havana), and the hotels Oasis, Turquesa and Villa Cuba, in Varadero, Matanzas. His work is part of several private collections in the U.S., Cuba, Spain, Portugal, and Austria, among other countries. He received the award “Targa d’Oro Citta di Gubbio 2010.” 5th Ressegna Internazionale di Arte Pittorica, Gubbio, Italy.

“The abstract expressionism of Pedro Avila Gendis is translated into gestures, stains and colors as a reflection of mental and emotional states, which at first glance appear to ignore reality, but which in essence constitute another way of representing it. His oeuvre is more closely associated with ‘lyrical abstraction,’ specifically to the Informalism and Tachism that arose in Europe after World War II. Avila Gendis reaffirms himself through the act of painting. Although on canvas, he materializes and immortalizes his reaction to external stimuli, his work is not reduced to pure spontaneous gestures. In his work, rationality is the essential ingredient. His pieces evidence the imprint of the creative process. A keen observer can perceive the different stages of the same, the different planes that arise on the canvas, how the color is balanced to communicate emotions, how the transparencies and textures are experimented with and exploited to the maximum.

For Avila Gendis the act of painting is an intellectual exercise in communicating emotionally and psychologically with the viewer.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Shared Secrets” by Raisa Clavijo.

22

Pedro Ávila Gendis, Untitled, series Espacio interior, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80.”

HENRY BALLATE

Henry Ballate (b. Aguada de Pasajeros, Cuba, 1966). He is a Cuban-American visual artist, curator and Art History Professor. He received his MFA in Visual Arts and his BFA in Graphic Design from Miami International University of Art and Design (2007). Previously, he studied drawing and painting at the Accademia Italiana in Florence, Italy, and graduated from the Art instructors School in Matanzas, Cuba, (1900). Henry Ballate is an innovative, eclectic and provocative figure in the local art scene. His work is easily recognizable through his use of known iconography, which are essential to his public interventions and appropriations. Throughout his career he has exhibited at solo and group shows in America, Europe, and Asia such as, Galeria, Matanza, 1990, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Bienal de La Habana,1991, Miami Art Basel, Miami’s Independent Thinkers, Miami International University of Art and Design, Soho Arts Miami, Arteamérica Art Fair, Solo Art Miami, San José’s National Gallery,Costa Rica, National Art Gallery in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Contemporanea Strozzina, Firenze Italy, Contemporary Art Museum, Moscow, Russia, Vargas Gallery, Pembrokepine, Florida. His works are part of private collections in Canada, Germany, USA, France and Italy.

“These iconic works, will they be punctual and will they bring a message to those who look for them? Let’s say yes. And suppose that for that simple reason, the first of them, the firstborn of the series, presents us “The Urinal” through an interactive work, composed of small black canvases, conceived in a traditional way. A hundred years after the birth of “The Fountaine,” “The Source” by Henry Ballate is a piece that can be transformed through the rearrangement of its components, leading the viewer to experience other relevant works of Art History. Afterwards, the order of apprehension of the sample matters little. It is in the interest of this project to reach its public in the same chaotic and fractional way in which the information flies. It is his interest to wander between the techné of the piece itself and the classic techné of what is online, dissociate us from the authenticity of the work, compared to the legitimacy of the work, compared to the effectiveness and essence of the work.”

24

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “The Source” by Roxana M. Bermejo.

Henry Ballate, The Source, 2017, Installation, dimensions variable.

JOSÉ BEDIA

José Bedia (b. Havana, Cuba, 1959). He is one of the most prominent Cuban contemporary artists. He was part of the exhibition Volumen I that revolutionized Cuban art in the 80s. He has participated in several solo and group shows around the world, such as: XLIV Venice Biennial, Havana Biennial, “Kuba OK,” Städtische Kunsthalle (Düsseldorf, Germany), “Magiciens de la Tèrre,” and Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), among others. His work is part of many private and public collections around the world such as, Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Bacardi Art Foundation (Miami), Birmingham Museum of Art (Alabama), Pérez Art Museum (Miami), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Caracas), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), Indianapolis Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MARCO) (Monterrey, Mexico), Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst (Aachen, Germany), The Rodríguez Collection (Miami), and Museum of Modern Art (New York), among others.

“José Bedia has developed a system of making art as efficient and well oiled as a factory. Not such a modern factory, to be sure. You could say that high technology is not something that has a lot to do with him or with his work, although he must inevitably take advantage of its many benefits in his daily life. On the contrary, Bedia has always been fascinated by the simplest forms of human creation, crafted by using the hands, the strength and skills of the body, and elemental techniques and tools; by artisan manufacture; by everything that imitates nature, animals, plants, the sea and the river, that learns from them and respects them but does not oppose them.

Thus he is – and has been from a very young age – a student and passionate admirer of the indigenous, aboriginal, traditional peoples, especially from Africa, America and the Caribbean. These include extinct peoples, who are analyzed in prehistorical studies and archaeology; and also those who are modern and contemporary, and are studied by ethnology, anthropology and sociology.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Diálogos Místicos” by Orlando Hernández.

26

José Bedia, Nkuyo Campo Nfinda, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 120 ½ x 70.”

CUNDO BERMÚDEZ

Cundo Bermúdez (b. Havana, Cuba, 1914 – d. Miami, USA, 2008). In 1926, Bermúdez was admitted at the Institute of Havana, and in 1930 enrolled at the renowned San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied painting for two years. Later, he traveled to Mexico and studied at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts. In 1949, he was one of the founders of the Asociación de Pintores y Escultores de Cuba (APEC). Throughout his career, he exhibited his work in such cities as, Havana, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Lima, Venice, Miami, New York and Washington D.C. He was the recipient of the Cintas Foundation Fellowship in 1973.

His work is part of the collections of the Lowe Art Museum (University of Miami, Coral Gables), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), and The Rodríguez Collection (Miami), among others.

“After an intermittent relation with art from the age of 30, Bermudez’s 1938 trip to Mexico to study drawing, sealed his artistic destiny. By the mid-1940s he had developed a very personal style of ‘primitivism,’ characterized by the use of accentuated profiles and strident colors. His paintings from that decade are famous for their robust, dark-skinned figures with mask-like faces, often lovers enjoying themselves in some tranquil tropical locale. The backgrounds of his paintings fix the scene in Cuba and/ or the Caribbean through architectural details, exuberant vegetation, and brilliant colors and light. His paintings share in common with those of his contemporaries an interest in elaborate compositions and brilliant colors, as well as in the representation of human sensuality, tropical vegetation, and details of Cuban colonial architecture as the preferred means of symbolizing “Cubanness.”

The contribution of Bermudez to the art of his generation was the visualization of a powerful sense of rhythm in his compositions, the originality of the harmonies he struck with metallic colors, and one of the most idyllic representations of lovers.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Una Introduccion a la Pintura Cubana Moderna” by Juan A. Martinez.

28

Cundo Bermúdez, Untitled, 1989, gouache on paper, 40 x 26.�

ADRIANO BUERGO

Adriano Buergo (b. Havana, Cuba, 1964). Is a Cuban artist who is currently Miamibased. He completed his art studies at The Higher Institute of Art in Havana, Cuba, in 1988. Together with four other artists, he founded the art group known as Puré. The work of Adriano Buergo, along with that of other Cuban artists of the 80s generation, engages socio-cultural themes. In one of the best known series of his work he gave birth to a rather peculiar character: a bricollage domestic fan named “Roto” (Broken).

Roto became the icon of the struggle for survival in an environment plagued with material privation and contradictions. Nonetheless, Roto is capable of adapting to the challenges of his daily existence and to yearn for them, allowing the viewer to witness a process of transcendence, always seeking to remake himself in order to delve into new aspects of his reality. Today, his works are included in the collections of Ludwig Forum fur Kunst, Aachen, Germany, National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, The Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, The Farber Collection and The Rodríguez Collection, among others.

“In the more recent paintings, Roto-Náutica, exhibited in 2017 at the Kendall Art Center in South Florida, Roto assumes the shapes and colors of his denied aspirations. Blues and violets, golds, white and grey. Against the persistent and dramatic darkness of backdrops that are his native soil, Roto twists into organic shapes, sprouts a wise foam of beard, petals into golds that appear like gelling flames. He is orgasmic and visionary, free and wrestling joyously with constraint.

This may be a kind of pentecostal release for Roto, now that he is manifestly a trinity of simultaneous conditions: the prodigal son, the prodigal’s brother, and the lamb of sacrifice. But he is also resplendent, daring to dance. If shadow remains the grammar of his soul, light is its new semantics. He survives vibrant, eschewing his youthful exhaustion, with the workings of memory and conviction intact. We will learn from him now what we have always needed to know. ” 30

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Roto-Náutica” by Ricardo Pau-Llosa.

Adriano Buergo, Rostro Roto, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 42 x 43.�

ARIEL CABRERA

Ariel Cabrera Montejo (b. in Camaguey, Cuba in 1982). If every painting tries to tell a story, then the work of Ariel Cabrera is a mixture of stories with divergent origins: The Hispano-Cuban-American war, due in large part to Joseph Pulitzer, or the insatiable graphic appetites of bourgeois libido, before the end of “La Belle Epoque.”

The heroes and heroines of these oils and watercolors are travelling companions of the mythical Cuban general Mambises, the hard working Admiral Cervera, and the fearsome Rough Riders of Teddy Roosevelt. “In my work, I select images taken from pre-established heritage documents to enter rough areas and aspects little touched by the Cuban history, setting references relating to the beginnings of photography and its forums of dialogue with painting.”

“La tregua fecunda is for Cabrera Montejo another rest, another pact. I refer to the one that happened to the Spanish-Cuban-American War. Instead of armistices and treaties or tired poses of warriors, Cabrera Montejo offers them the serenity of sex.

And in his dialogue with the history of art he brings, in addition to the Valderrama, the Menocal, the Hernández Giró, the North Americans Frederic Remington (the great portraitist of the Wild West whom press mogul William Randolph Hearst sent to Cuba to illustrate the Spanish-American War that was about to be invented), and the equally famous Winslow Homer, who also tried his palette in peaceful scenes from Santiago. The pictures of La tregua fecunda shake without effort. What disturbs of these pieces is not what they represent, but the ungraspable mastery with which they are made. It is not that the flesh of sex tries to penetrate the spirit of art, but that the outburst of art has violated the rather peaceful imaginary of pornography.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Mambises para adultos” by Enrique Del Risco.

32

Ariel Cabrera Montejo, from the series Tregua fecunda, 2016, oil on linen, 14 x 10.�

SERVANDO CABRERA MORENO

Servando Cabrera Moreno. b. in Havana, Cuba (1923–1981). He studied painting at the Fine Arts Academy of San Alejandro, where he graduated in 1942. In September 1943, he presented his first solo show at the Havana Lyceum. In the years that followed, he exhibited works related to his academic experience at the annual salons of the Circle of Fine Arts and other institutions. In 1946 he travelled to the United States and took a course at the Art Students’ League in New York. Among other artists, he discovered Picasso, who was to become – according to the painter himself – the greatest influence in his work throughout his life. In 1949 he travelled to Europe, visited museums and attended the Grande Chaumière in Paris. His first rupture occurred in those years with oil paintings from 1950 and 1951, in which a geometrical steadiness of cubist origin led him close to abstraction. Afterwards, the influence of Miró and Klee dominated his brief but intense abstract experience (1951-1954), whose results he exhibited in Spain and France. Since 1959, the themes of the Revolution have become part of his painting. Works of his great epic cycle reached their climax with the series Héroes, jinetes y parejas. His works reside in numerous museums around the world, among them are in Sofia, Bucharest, Bogota, Venezuela, Peru, United States, Spain, Italy, Mexico, England, and in institutions and private collections.

34

“What makes Cabrera Moreno an important Cuban painter came from a sense of rebellion and nonconformity that led him to make productive changes, guided by his zeal for art. Only one sometimes feels his trajectory was a constant searching, like that of gold prospectors who have found some good nuggets but never the mother lode. Or did he find it in the great erotic cycle to which he dedicated most of the last fifteen years of his life? We have seen someone who began as a diligent academic painter become an abstractionist, a neo-realist, an expressionist ... and in the end, one is left wondering whether he really was not any of these, but rather a great tourist of art. Born with an unlimited Master Card for opening any door he felt like wandering through. This is not necessarily a criticism: this kind of mannerism can be as valid a method as any other. Cabrera Moreno was true to his temperament as a tireless traveller, with a round-trip ticket. His oeuvre, seen as a whole, is also a great personal diary of a journey through painting.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Viaje por la Pintura” by Gerardo Mosquera.

Servando Cabrera Moreno, Untitled, 1973, oil on cardboard, 24 x 36.�

CONSUELO CASTAÑEDA

Consuelo Castañeda (b. Havana, Cuba, 1958) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Miami. She emerged in the Cuban avant-garde of the 1980s, helping to catapult its cultural production onto the international stage and shifting the popular understanding of the relationship between art and politics in Cuba, as well as in broader Latin America. As a professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, she was a pivotal figure in Cuba until her emigration to Mexico, and then Miami in the 1990s. Her work as a painter, photographer and multimedia installation artist has recently shifted to social media and digital format. Her focus is on creating interactive works that anyone with a modem and a computer can readily access.

The artist participated in the Havana Biennials in 1984, 1986, and 1991. She was awarded with the Cinta Fellowship in 1997-1998 as an installation artist.

“Cateñeda’s work has traditionally focused on a depiction of cultural codes she has carefully selected to best represent her living and working environment. Casteñada enjoys playing both curator and artist in her shows, curating objects to sound out her voice, critique and judgment on everyday happenings. Her shows, play with changing the context in which we view what we dismiss so flippantly on a day-to-day basis. Through this, the artist comments on the process traditionally associated with artistic production, the ephemeral nature of objects, the lasting memory produced through documentation, questions surrounding originality, and much more. Although considered an artist that deals with the conflict between conceptual and constructivist art, Casteñeda’s work has been described as being post post-modern. Influenced deeply by Pop Art, Casteñeda’s work crosses over cultural barriers, artistic movements and a range of ages, Casteñeda also links her works back to her artistically formative years studying in Cuba. Whilst discussing ideas of originality explored in the artist’s work, she states that her fascination comes from the fact that whilst studying art in Cuba, almost all the works studied are reproductions of masterpieces.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition at the Galería Orígenes by Jasmine Chohan.

36

Consuelo Castañeda, Pinochio, 2011, D-Print/Acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20” Ed. 11/100

HUMBERTO CASTRO

Humberto Castro (b. in Havana, Cuba in 1957) He is a graduate of the San Alejandro National School of Fine Arts and the Higher Institute of Art in Havana. Castro achieved notoriety in the 1980’s together with a handful of avant-garde young artists (among them, Elso Padilla, José Bedia and Tomás Sánchez), and began challenging preconceived notions and political dogma. Their eclectic art was edgy and often controversial. The Generation of 80s, as they were collectively known, assimilated and adapted ideas from such diverse sources as Photo-Realism and Afro-Cuban rites.

As further proof of their independent ways and original talent, each of the members of this pioneering group developed separate and distinctive styles. Castro’s oeuvre combines mythical and actual events, thus this thematic fusion imbues the work with an alluring, visionary quality. His compositions, no matter how grim the subject matter, display an innate elegance, making them palatable and even lyrical at times. Castro is a master at capturing metamorphosis, his svelte figures seem to endlessly evolve from ethereal beings to earthlings. Castro’s stirring palette and sensuous textures further enhance his bewitching designs.

“Along with José Bedia, Rubén Torres Llorca, and others, Castro is part of Cuba’s vaunted 1980s generation of artists who made a splash on the international scene.

As a teenager, he studied at the San Alejandro institute and later graduated from the prestigious Instituto Superior de Arte before helping to start indie art collectives and staging exhibits often critical of the Cuban government. He left Cuba in January 1989, just ten months before the wall fell. His peers who relocated to Miami were embraced by local collectors and went on to present major museum shows here.

But Castro, in his European exile, remained noticeably quiet in South Florida. He followed Bedia and Torres Llorca to Miami in 1999, though, and the next year the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale showcased a well-received survey of his work.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Traces the Antilles” by Carlos Suarez De Jesus.

38

Humberto Castro, Untitled, acrylic on canvas, 35 x 43.�

HUGO CONSUEGRA

Hugo Consuegra (b. Havana, 1929 - d. New York, 2003). He studied at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, the Hubert de Blanck Music Conservatory and went on to gain a degree in Architecture in 1955 from Havana University. His first solo exhibition was held in 1953 at the Lyceum in Havana, and in 1954 he became one of the founding members of Los Once (The Eleven), a group of young painters and sculptors who introduced abstract expressionism to Cuba. His award-winning work was seen in numerous exhibitions across the United States and in Europe.

Consuegra was Professor of Art History at Havana University’s School of Architecture (1960-5), he went to Madrid in 1967, where he lived before moving to NY in 1970.

He became an American citizen in 1975. Throughout his career, Consuegra widely exhibited his work in such cities as: Havana, New York, Paris, Cadiz (Spain), and Sao Paulo, among others. His work is part of major collections as, Casa de las Américas (Havana), Cintas Foundation (New York), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), Art Museum of the Americas (Washington D.C.), and the Rodríguez Collection (Miami), among others. He was awarded with the Cintas Foundation Fellowship.

“A national tradition in art manifests itself through the patterns of visual thinking that structure works by different artists operating across stylistic and generational divides. The presence of a tradition is certainly not evidenced by recurring motifs, themes or images. Such recurrences are only meaningful, so far as the identification of a vital tradition is concerned, as ancillary elements, labeling codes perhaps, and the equivalent of regional accents or slang in language usage. The grammar of visual thought lies far deeper: and an artist’s worth must be measured by understanding how I, he or she engages this grammar in particular works. No artist’s work attains universality without belonging and contributing to a convergence of patterns of thought which constitutes a specific tradition. Even groundbreakers must come to be seen as founders of new traditions, without which, their work would be no more than a radiant eccentricity, at best.”

40

Fragment retrieved from the essay “The art of Hugo Consuegra” by Ricardo Pau-Llosa.

Hugo Consuegra, Composición abstracta, 1980, oil on canvas, 31½ x 39.”

ARTURO CUENCA

Arturo Cuenca (b. Holguín, Cuba in 1955). After studying art and literature at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro and the Escuela Nacional de Instructores de Arte in Havana, Cuenca taught briefly at the Instituto Preuniversitario 8 de Octubre in El Cotorro. He won several prizes for engraving, photography and installation in Cuba before moving to Mexico in 1989 and finally to the United States in 1991. He has been exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. In 1995, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College held a one-man show, Arturo Cuenca: Modernbund. That same year, the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale hosted Sharing Roots: Cuenca and Gory. His work is in several permanent collections, including the Art Space Gallery in Rotterdam, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Caracas, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, and the Rodríguez Collection in Miami, among others. He was awarded with the Cintas Foundation Fellowship.

“Cuenca uses the critical awareness of conceptual art to break down simplistic versions of the world. But he also goes beyond the didactic limitation of much conceptual art by offering the viewer a rich visual experience. His compressed narratives elegantly reinvent the history of painting, photography, and cinema; Cuenca has rejected nothing except the easy solution.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “On one level” by Raphael Rubinstein.

42

Arturo Cuenca, Ciencia e ideología, 1986. AP-2014, print on canvas, 20 x 40.”

ANA ALBERTINA

Ana Albertina Delgado (b. Havana, Cuba, 1963) Has lived and produced her art in Miami since 1993, for two years she lived in Mexico City and in 1999 she obtained her U.S. citizenship. Ana Albertina began her studies of fine arts in 1979 at the San Alejandro National School of Fine Arts in Havana, the oldest high school of the arts in Cuba. She graduated in 1983 and entered the university-level Higher Institute of the Arts (ISA). By 1988 Ana had obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major.

Beginning in 1986, Ana Albertina founded the arts group known as Pure together with four other artists. Pure was a contribution to the Cuban esthetic, it incorporated popular and social themes into the art work. The special accent of Ana’s work focuses on the feminine side and to observe the borders between feminine or masculine criteria about our sensuality. Ana has also participated in several group exhibitions of her generation, known in Cuba as the Generation of the Eighties. This took place in Cuba, Latin America, the United States and Europe. In the eighties Ana has also had solo-shows, in Cuba, Mexico and United States.

“Former member of Puré, an art collective that shook the Cuban cultural scene of the second half of the eighties through public interventions that questioned everyday life in Cuba, Ana Albertina’s oeuvre is always a very personal interpretation of our quotidianity, desires, fears, and prejudices. Ana’s peculiar world is populated with dissimilar influences ranging from Cuban popular culture to feminist concerns.

Intertwined in her works, are elements of Afro-Cuban imaginary, Cuban-peasant mythology, Mexican folklore, among others, that engender a sui generis fabulation.

Her proposal -easily linked to the unconscious- hides a very analytic reflexion on ontological issues where femininity becomes the main path to discourse on memory, legacy and prejudices.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “The paths of the soul” by Janet Batet.

44

Ana Albertina Delgado, La danza de un solo pie, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24.�

ANGEL DELGADO

Angel Delgado (b. Havana, Cuba, 1965). He graduated from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts (Havana) and the Higher Institute of Art (Havana). His works have been exhibited at Nina Menocal Gallery (Mexico City), Couturier Gallery (Los Angeles), Jonathan Ferrara Gallery (New Orleans), Museo del Barrio (New York), and Exit Art (New York), among other art venues. He was awarded with MOLAA 08 Prize (Long Beach, CA). He was an artist in residence at the Mattress Factory (Pittsburg).

His work is part of collections as, Prins Claus Fonds (Holland), Farber Collection (USA), EFC Holdings, Inc. (USA), The Rodríguez Collection (USA), and International Sculpture Center (USA).

“In doing his works Angel Delgado has added to this list of uses and abuses of the handkerchief a new function, perhaps the most complex of them: it has discovered that the handkerchief is also a metaphor of the universe. Or more than a metaphor, a mirror — in this case a tarnished mirror, without quicksilver, shattered — where such a universe is reflected. If it turns out that that reflection seems too oppressive to us, suffocating, or that the image is altered by the presence of dirt and rupture, by stains of sweat, tears, semen, do not forget that it is the reflection of the torn universe of the prison, that Humiliating non-place where the artist once had to remain as an example for trying to discover for us, through the free exercise of art, new functions and meanings.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “The handkerchief as a mirror of the universe” by Orlando Hernández.

46

Angel Delgado, Historias paralelas LXVI, 2008. Límites cotidianos IV, 2011, Color pencil, pen and Cold Cream, 18 x 16.�

MAIKEL DOMíNGUEZ

Maikel Domínguez (b. Holguín, Cuba, 1989). He completed studies at the Real Institute of Art (Stockholm, Sweden, 2012), graduated from the Higher Institute of Art (Havana, Cuba, 2012) and from Professional Academy of the Visual Arts (Holguín, 2007). He has carried out solo shows such as: Bellas Ausencias (Rimonim Art Gallery, Miami, USA, 2016), Antes que anochezca (Galleri Duerr, Stockholm, 2011), Apuntes de un soldado desconocido (Osvaldo Guayasamín Museum, Havana, 2011), Si el mar se secara lo sembrara de caña (Carmelo Galería, Havana, 2009). Also, he has taken part of group shows such as: Flujos e influencias (Santa Bárbara Cultural Center, Stockholm, 2012), Exposición de Primavera (Real Institute of Art, Stolkholm, 2012), Layers (Collateral to XI Havana Biennial, 2012), Cripsis (University of the Arts, Havana, 2011), El extremo de la bala (Cuba Pavilion, Havana, 2010), Bomba (Wifredo Lam Centro, Havana, 2010), Esporas (Cuba Pavilion, Havana, 2010), Cambio y fuera (Collateral to X Havana Biennial, 2009). His works are included in private collections in Cuba, USA, Canada, Sweden, Luxemburg, and Spain.

48

“There is some natural cruelty in these paradoxes or dualities but Full of pollen is a fragment of Maikel’s diary that transcends a phase of the year. That invisible dust is an efficient pretext to revisit and close, if possible, a chapter of his life; but also to let off steam on it, on its rarities and absurdities. These are states he concentrates on their exact dose: the only phenomenal vestige of this “excess optimism” he experienced upon arrival is portrayed in the titles of the works, whose euphoria tries to contrast with his mute mood, and the violence of the self-portrait that rests on a gentle background, meekly decorative, kichón. Now that I mention it, here is another visual clue that we can trace in his generation and in this series: the presence of kitsch without any shyness. Not as a result of a perversion of meaning, or the need for an alibi to talk about ideological or cultural emptying, not that. Not as “bad forms” but as something genetic and organic, of which, of course, there is no conscience. The kitsch that is not kitsch, that exists here in its pure state, without a subject that manipulates it, has reached its banal, disinterested status. At this point, it´s not worth it to take care of it.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Full of pollen” by Elvia Rosa Castro.

Maikel Domínguez, Full Of Pollen (Dear Frank) 2018, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48.”

TOMÁS ESSON

Tomás Esson (b. Havana, Cuba, 1963). He graduated from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts and the Higher Institute of Art, in Havana. He has participated in several solo and group shows around the world, such as: It’s So Hot! (Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, 1991), The Children of Guillermo Tell (Alejandro Otero Museum of Visual Arts, Caracas, Venezuela), Art from Cuba (State Russian Museum and Ludwig Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2002), and Tomás Esson: The Return of the Dragon (Ramis Barquet Gallery, New York, 2010). His work is part of art collections such as, Monterrey Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico), Miami Art Museum, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), and The Rodríguez Collection (Miami), among others.

“Tomás Esson has developed a strong style that combines opulent painting with the cartoonish and the grotesque. His recent work are large polytychs that cover entire walls with a bestiary of alternating national and primordial symbols. His primary protagonist is “talisman,” an indeterminate, horned turd that often take on anthropomorphic form as metaphor for the working of society.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the book “Eye Minded” by Kellie Jones, Amiri Baraka.

50

Tamáz Esson, Flag, 2001, oil on canvas, 24 x 36.”

CARLOS ESTÉVEZ

Carlos Estévez (b. in Havana, Cuba, 1969) Lives and works in Miami, USA. Graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana, Cuba in 1992. He received the Grand Prize in the First Salon of Contemporary Cuban Art in 1995; and The Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2015. Residencies include: Academia de San Carlos, UNAM, Mexico (1997), Gasworks Studios, London, England (1997), The UNESCO-ASCHBERG in The Nordic Artists’ Center in Dale, Norway (1998), ArtOMI Foundation, New York, USA (1998), The Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA, USA (2002), Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France (2003-2004), Montclair University, New Jersey, USA (2005), and McColl Center, Charlotte, NC US (2016).

“The art of Carlos Estévez reveals a consistent interest in the potential for visualization to examine the link between humanity and the infinity of human experience. He explores notions of symbolism, mythology, time, anatomy, metaphysics and the cosmos in a quest for understanding that transcends the visual to enter the realm of the mind in complex works in different media. He has long investigated the processes used by artists through the centuries that have transformed personal visions into artistic expressions. He follows a long tradition of experimentation with materials that enable him to produce unique works to address new ideas, and re-evaluate those of long-ago. During his career, Estévez has used drawing, painting, sculpture, objects and installations to create a body of work known for its intellectual context and esoteric references to science, philosophy, aesthetics, and alchemy.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Firework” by Carol Damian.

52

Carlos Estévez, Non-Stop Journey, 2012, Oil and watercolor pencil on canvas. 38 x 68.”

IVONNE FERRER

Ivonne Ferrer (b. Cuba) Graduated from San Alejandro Academy, and René Portocarrero National Silk Screen Print Shop, Havana, Cuba. Atribuciones in Fidelio Ponce Gallery (1990) was her first solo exhibition, which led her to leave the Cuban art scene for the Spanish circuit where she participated in: Expo Universal Sevilla 92, Arts Pavillion, La temperatura de Dios (1993), Fisiología decorativa (1994) and La isla mágica in Copenhagen, together with two masters, Julio Girona and the Spaniard Fernando Somosa, etc. Ivonne migrated to the United States in 1995.

In 1997 produced Trinomio cubano at Botello Gallery, Puerto Rico and in 2001 the solo exhibition www.ivonne.com at Durban Segnini Gallery. 2012 (R) Evolution Comics, Solo Exhibition, Aluna Art Foundation, Miami. Her work is held in the permanent collections of: the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), California.

Arcale Pavillion, Salamanca. Museo María Sambrano, Madrid and Museo de Galicia, Madrid. She has also participated in many collective expositions: A Marriage of Science and Art, FIU, Miami, 2005. Soupe d’ escargot, Alliance Francaise, Miami, 2008. Supermix, Contemporay Art in Edge Zones Gallery, 2009. Itinerant expo for America and Europa I Have a Dream, 2010. Women at the edge of an island, Museum of de Cuban Art, Miami, 2015. Xico in Miami, Latin American Artists Exhibition, and Museum Park. Miami, 2017.

“Ivonne Ferrer […] evokes the tumult of Enriquez’s rapturous landscapes, the Christian iconography of the Last Judgment, surrealist juxtapositions of images beneath a sky loaded with Goyesque birds, and American pop culture […] metonymy in overdrive, providing a clear link between a generation’s hopelessness and the complex tradition of Latin American and Cuban Art of the unconscious.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Notes for a Retrospective” by Ricardo Pau-Llosa.

54

Ivonne Ferrer, Aquí todos hacen de todo, mixed media on canvas, 24 x 35.�

JOAQUÍN FERRER

Joaquin Ferrer (b. July 4, 1929 in Manzanillo, Cuba) Ferrer is a painter and cartoonist linked to the movement of lyrical abstraction. Ferrer began taking an interest in surrealism, but always kept a certain distance and preferred a non-figurative world, “neither dreamlike nor fantastic.” Ferrer arrived in Paris for a scholarship obtained in 1960 to continue his studies and decided to remain permanently. He reveals his perpetual attention to the beings and things, shapes, colors and structures of trees, birds or variations of the light. Formed in the School of Fine Arts of Havana, Ferrer lived during the last decades “more and more a relative solitude, away from the artistic and worldly means,” without ceasing to interest his faithful collectors in France and abroad. After the Museum of Modern Art of the Cuban capital, where he made his first exhibitions between 1954 and 1958, and the gallery Le Point which organized his first Parisian show, the artist showed his work in art centers such as the Maeght Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art of the Villa of Paris.

“It is wrong to make gods even before they have had time to express themselves.

One of them, Ferrer, is a bit of my discovery. Far from Pop’Art, Mec’Art and their substitutes, it seems profoundly authentic ... ” Max Ernst, Paris-Presse, 30/01/1968.

56

Joaquín Ferrer, Lancer le diaporama, 2008, oil on canvas, 18 x 20.”

GUIDO LLINÁS

Guido Llinás (b. Pinar del Río, Cuba, 1923 – d. Paris, 2005). A self-taught artist, Llinás specialized in painting and engraving. He was part of Los Once group who had its first exhibition in Havana in 1953. He established himself in Paris in the early 60’s where he was in touch with Galerie DR and had the opportunity to meet Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz Diez, Luis Tomasello and Julio Le Parc. Throughout his prolific career, he exhibited at major museums and institutions worldwide such as, Grand Palais (Paris), Modern Art Museum (Liege, Belgium), Galeria Sudamericana (New York), and Kunsthall (Malmo, Sweden), among others.

“Guido Llinás left in 1953 for Paris, where he has lived ever since. The distance he felt from Havana (and his home province of Pinar del Rio) served to make his emotional and visual affinities for Cuba more acute. He continued to produce work in the abstract style he had developed by the beginning of the 1950s. The postCuba works often have generic titles (Signs, Black Painting, Red Painting). These paintings they blend the gestural qualities that relate him to Abstract Expressionism, with veiled references to Afro-Cuban ritual. Circles, arrows, the suggestion of an axe or a cross motif make their appearances in these pictures. None of these references specifically refer to a particular cult or form of worship. There is no instance of folkloric or primitivist self consciousness. German art historian Christoph Singler has written eloquently on Llinás affinities for Afro-Cuban mythology, yet all instances of this is redolent of subtlety and a lack of specificity. There is no nostalgia nor overt longing for a specific time or place. The work of Guido Llinás is discreet in size.

Each painting demonstrates an assuredness and an expertise in the craft and the art of painting. Llinás continues to evolve in a way that both testifies to his personal and aesthetic energy and to his assimilation and reinvention of the symbology of his Cuban heritage.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Enigmatic Signs: Guido Llinás” by Edward J. Sullivan.

58

Guido Llinás, series Pintura negra, 1991, oil on canvas, 18 x 24.”

ROGELIO LÓPEZ MARÍN (GORY)

Rogelio López Marín (Gory) was born in Havana, Cuba and he lives and works in Miami, FL. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the National School of Art in Havana. He took a Photographic and Graphic Design course under the tutorial of the Cuban artist Raúl Martínez and has a Master of Art History from the University of Havana. Gory’s work can be found in public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 20th Century Art Permanent Collection, New York, NY (painting), LACMA (Los Angeles Museum of Art) permanent collection, CA (photography), The Corcoran Gallery of Art (Corcoran’s Permanent Collection of Photographs), Washington, DC, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago, IL, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, FL, MAM (Miami Art Museum), Miami, FL, Centro Wilfredo Lam, Havana, Cuba (photography), and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba (painting and photography).

“Considered as a key figure of Photorealism in Cuban art of the end of the 70s, Rogelio López Marín, “Gory” extended his Project to photography after renouncing to painting within the frame of “Volumen Uno” exhibition in 1981. The work of López Marín consolidates as a contemporary exercise of synthesis and production of new contents, in a healthy anthropophagy that carry him through time, from Magritte to Richard Este or from Eugène Atget to Duane Michaels. With the years, his story would turn into an elliptical and alternative registry of Cuban occurrence and the migratory experience that characterized his generation. In the work of Gory, in his oneiric evocations or in the realm of memory and of the absence, his images provoke, there is a halo as real – or documental it should be said – as imaginary that underlies: the peaceful image of disenchantment, or the impossibility to inhabit another space than the one dictates by imagination.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Notes for a Retrospective” by Willy Castellanos.

60

Gory, Piscinas 02 / Piscinas 08, 2015, 16 x 24.�

CARLOS LUNA

Carlos Luna (b. 1969 in Pinar del Río, Cuba) Carlos Luna was admitted at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana, he then transferred to The National School of Visual Arts (ENAP) and later to the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), in Havana, during one of Cuba’s most innovative and vigorous art movements, the so-called “Art of the 80’s,” which put Cuba back on the map of the international art world. Among more than 60 exhibitions in museums and institutions throughout the country are the Pablo Picasso Ceramics/Carlos Luna Paintings Show (Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL); Carlos Luna: The Great Mambo [El Gran Mambo] (Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA), Bass Museum of Art (Miami Beach, FL), American University Museum (Washington, D.C.), Polk Museum of Art (Lakeland, FL), Susquehanna Art Museum (Harrisburg, PA), Art Gallery of Lebanon Valley College (Annville, PA), and Heather James Fine Art (Palm Desert, CA). Carlos Luna has maintained an active presence in numerous international shows in Latin America and Europe, most notably as a special guest of the Salon d’Automne in Paris (France, 2012). The interest in Carlos Luna’s work is also evident in the growing demand for it at auctions all over the U.S. and especially at the major auction houses in New York City.

“The art of Carlos Luna is original, authentic, irreducible to the sources that served him as a reference during its formation. It has a unique, unmistakable stamp which reveals an authentic communion between the refined and the grotesque, the complex and the direct, the intimate and the political, between the vernacular, taken on with pride, and in-depth inquiries about the human condition. My wish is that all factors, both from this world and the other one, come together even more in his favor so that he can continue to create freely.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “The art of Carlos Luna” by Alberto Jorge Carol.

62

Carlos Luna, La Consulta, 2017, gouache and charcoal on amate paper, 59 x 47.�

MANUEL MENDIVE

Manuel Mendive (b. Havana, 1944). He is one of the leading Afro-Cuban artists working today. His family practiced the Regla de Ocha, or Santeria, and cherished his Yoruba roots from the West coast of Africa. Mendive graduated from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in 1963. Since the beginning of his artistic career, he has exhibited at many group and solo art exhibits around the world. In 1968, he was awarded with the Adam Montparnasse prize for his painting exhibit at the Salon de Mai, in Paris, and third prize at the Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas, in Havana. In 1994, Mendive received the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres award from the Minister of Culture and Francophony of France. Today, his art is part of private and institutional collections in Cuba, Russia, Somalia, Benin, Congo, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Jamaica, and the United States, among other countries. “... [Mendive] completely identifies with what he paints. He is incapable of painting from a distance, from the outside, not even as an academic exercise. This is very important to understanding his later painting. He paints only people, animals and things that are close to him, that belong to his creative universe. When he is tempted to paint something exterior, he does so by almost forcing it into his personal world, to the point that might seem incongruous, though not in aesthetic dimension. This psychological-artistic device, framed within his wide ingenuity, is what produced the strong images of a cosmic rocket flying among Yoruba deities... or Martí on a small rocking chair with Che and Oyá, the orisha of the cemetery, who cuts the flowers...”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Explorations into Cuban Art” by Gerardo Mosquera.

64

Manuel Mendive, Espíritu del monte, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 48 ¾ x 63 ½.”

ALDO MENÉNDEZ

Aldo Menéndez (b. Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1948) A multifaceted artist and intellectual, with the Master Samuel Feijóo, started very early in the 60s in Performance; Menéndez was part of the well-known Cuban poster boom of the 60’s - 70’s. Since 1968 when he made his first personal exhibition, there have been innumerable individual and collective shows. He is also one of the pioneers of Photorealism on the island (1973-80), as well as the founder of the Taller de serigrafía René Portocarrero of Havana. “Within the new generation, Aldo Menéndez isn’t only an outstanding painter, but also an artistic promoter extraordinary” (René Portocarrero words for the inauguration of the serigraphy atelier in 1983). In 1972, his paintings and drawings were incorporated into the permanent collection of the National Museum of Havana.

In 1973 he founded the magazine Revolución y Cultura which he artistically directed and wrote for 9 years. In the 80’s he was an adviser to the Wifredo Lam Center and the National Museum. In 1987, the Ministry of Culture awarded him the National Order of Cuban Culture. He left his country in 1990, moving to Spain and subsequently to the United States in 1995 where he lives today. He has been exhibited in places as notable as the Arts Pavilion at the Universal Expo/Sevilla, Centro Cultural de la Villa in Madrid, La Tertulia Museum, Colombia, Museo Linares, Mexico and the Museum of Latin American Art of California, among others. Currently, he writes art critiques for the newspaper El Nuevo Herald, Art Districts, Art Pulse, Art Nexus and Art on Cuba magazines, etc.

“In the second half of the 80s Aldo Menéndez represents one great guiding force for the 80s generation of Cuban artists; although this is not the most fundamentally important thing about him. What truly matters in him is the example of renovation and his personal bet on rupture and change.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Junge Malerei in Cuba” by Hans Plachek.

66

Aldo Menéndez. Serie Retratos en chino (2012-2016), La civilización del espectáculo, mixed media, 31 x 31.”

JOSÉ MARÍA MIJARES

José María Mijares (b. Havana, 1921 – d. Miami, 2004). He began artistic studies in 1936 at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, where his professors included Romañach, Menocal, Valderrama, Ramón Loy, and Caravia. He resided in Miami since 1968 until his death. Florida International University awarded him with an honorary doctorate in fine arts in 2001. Mijares’ work has been exhibited at several major shows in Havana, Paris, Caracas, Port au Prince (Haiti), Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Washington D.C., and Miami, among other cities.

“Mijares is primarily a colorist, pure color constituting the substance of the forms of his creation. Drawing as a rule provides firm support, bold outlines giving definition and meaning to the whole. His thematic material is biological in character, based on living organisms: the life latent with no static form imparts a poetic mystery to his compositions .... As a colorist, Mijares continues a tradition long identified with his country. He gives new meaning to the language of the past, however, fashioning it into expressions that transcend boundaries of both time and place.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Art of Cuba in Exile” by Jose Gomez Sicre.

68

José María Mijares, Abstracto, oil on canvas, 62 x 50.”

PEDRO DE ORAÁ

Pedro de Oraá (b. in Havana, Cuba, 1931) He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts “San Alejandro”. During the 1950s, when he worked in abstraction, he published El Instante Cernido (Sifting Instantly, 1952–53), his first book of poems. After de Oraá met Loló Soldevilla (1901–1971), they traveled to Venezuela for his first solo exhibition at Galería-Librería Sardio, Caracas (1957). That same year, the couple founded Galería de Arte Color-Luz in Havana, which became a meeting place for Diez Pintores Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters), a group of artists working in geometric abstraction (1958–61). De Oraá became the group’s archivist and documented the Cuban local art scene. He represented Cuba in various exhibitions abroad, and from 1961 onward played a vital role in national cultural organizations, including the National Union of Writers and Artists (Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba) and the National Council of Culture (Consejo Nacional de Cultura).

From 1964 travels in Eastern Europe and is related to independent artists from the countries that comprise it. Oraá is well known for being one of the most prominent Cuban artist of experimental and abstract practice in 60’s and 70’s. He received the National Designer Award from the Cuban Book Institute (2011) and the Cuban National Visual Arts Award (2015).

“Pedro de Oraá early work seems to be seconded by the biomorphic abstraction where flowing forms cohabit in the vast pictorial space. Gradually, these sort of organic entities evolve, growing in size and structure, covering the canvas and the relationship between them becomes more cohesive. In his most recent paintings, de Oraá constricts the palette being almost monochrome. Focused on the black and white, the artist explores the different shades of each color in a kaleidoscopic vision where the geometric structure seems to be dynamited. This futuristic feature is directly associated with the artist’s interest on dynamic, evolution and velocity.

In the midst of these always evolving faceted landscapes, the sphere -airy and spotless- embodies the cosmic time: the universe..”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Across Time” by Janet Batet.

70

Pedro de Oraá, Untitle, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 31 X 39”

PEDRO PABLO OLIVA

Pedro Pablo Oliva (b. Pinar del Río, Cuba, 1949). He graduated from the National School of Art (Havana, 1970) and the Provincial School of Visual Arts (Pinar del Río, 1961). Recent solo exhibitions include, “Pedro Pablo Oliva, Recent Work” (11th Havana Biennial, 2012), “Unfulfilled Promises” (Pan American Art Projects, Miami, 2008) and “Historia de amor” (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, 2007). His works have been exhibited in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, among other countries. His works are part of the collections of museums such as: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), Museo Bacardi (Santiago de Cuba), BANCOLAT Collection (Panama), and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (Mexico).

“Pedro Pablo Oliva has persevered in the office of chronicler of his circumstance and his time. From the very distant seventies he has given us a portrait that transcends the anecdotal to form a universe of profound repercussions, of fractal visions and waves of symbolic revelations. Through a challenging lyricism, full of sharp irony, assumes the conflict of human beings and delves into the great dilemmas that plague their contemporaries: loyalty, tolerance, moral stature, dependency relationships ... are variables of social behavior that are related, in his work, with other more personal records, where the artist also wanted to delve. It points then toward indifference, bewilderment or lust through characters anchored to the everyday, but in turn levitating after a very slight breath of the eternal.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Ese provocador irredimible” by Isabel María Pérez Pérez.

72

Pedro Pablo Oliva, Siete Apariciones de Alicia, serie sillones de mimbre, 2010, Oil on Canvas, 26.13 X 22.23�

GINA PELLÓN

Gina Pellón (b. Cumanayagua, Cuba, 1926 – d. Paris, 2014). At the beginning, she attended the San Alejandro Academy in Havana, Cuba where she received a solidsix-year formative training which later on helped her become a knowledgeable and confident artist. Her resolute spirit to stay on the pulse and a no-fear personality takes her to France. Reborn in 1959 (the definitive year when Gina left the island with another group of Cuban artists and arrived in Paris), she immediately fell in love with the city and decided to stay permanently. Paris offered the young artist, a vibrant atmosphere, a bountiful cultural life and a different group of friends. From this moment on, and despite the obvious difficulties of adaptation while living in exile, she worked hard and pursued her long-standing desire to become a professional artist.

She expanded her horizons, mingled with personalities such as Breton, Matta, Lam, Asger Jorn, and learned about the popular art movements of the times. Throughout her career, she received several awards such as, the Medal of the City of Cholet (France, 1961), Order of Arts and Letters (France, 1978), and the Cintas Foundation Fellowship (New York, 1978), among others. Her work has been exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in Venice, Miami, Silkeborg (Denmark), Paris, Copenhagen, Nantes, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Trodheim (Norway), Caracas, and Lausanne (Switzerland), among other cities.

74

“Although color is the major protagonist in this artist’s work, we must not forget the presence of her characters: fairies, dolls, butterflies, birds ... always winged characters in search of transparency, as Juan Ramon Jimenez requested in his best poems in Background Animal. Gina Pellon’s encounter with the group Cobra, as well as with the lyrical rapture of Chagall or the magic of Aloyse, was the catalyst for work that was already acquiring a maturity of expression shaped in Havana.

Paris was, however, the decisive encounter as for so many other artists. Matta, for example, provided her with dynamic color within space, while the Cobra artists granted spontaneity and boldness, constant elements in her work. Armed with an extensive and intense gamut of color, the world of Gina Pellon bursts into light, conveying a strange message for our times: the joy of being.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “10 Cuban Artists in Paris” by Carlos M. Luis.

Gina Pellón, Guagua I, 1970, crayon couleur, 19 ½ x 25 ½.”

AIMEE PEREZ

Aimee Perez (b in Havana, Cuba in 1955). Artist, sculptor and ceramicist, she left for the United States when she was twelve with her family through the Freedom Flights and grew up in Miami; a Cuban immigrant community. As a young adult she won the Gold Key Award in painting and several honorable mentions as she continued her pursuit of the arts during her college years. In 1989 she moved to Mexico City and continued painting and exhibiting with Cuban and Mexican artists. In 1997 she was invited to participate as a guest artist in the studio of Mexican sculptor Jose Sacal and it is here where she begins to work for the first time in 3D with clay. She returned to Miami in 2006 and continued her work, winning several awards for her figurative ceramics in the state of Florida. Perez has been praised for her command of gestures, making her sculptures expressionistic and powerful which, combined with the juxtaposition to found objects, creates an organic symbiosis. She says her work is her voice, a dialogue with the observer and simultaneously a selfexploration. Her work can be found in many private collection in the United States and Mexico and in permanent collections including Florida International University Honors College Collection and Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama.

“Broken Roots is a state of alert about the pressing environmental problems facing our planet, making us aware of our role as an integral and active part of that cosmos in crisis. That is the main idea behind pieces like Still Waters (2017), Diary of Fall, Invierno (Winter) and (both 2018) where the artist puts to hand millenarian legends that become at once omen and sentence.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Broken Roots” by Janet Batet.

76

Aimee Perez, Still Waters, 2017, mixed media, 60 x 14 x 12.�

RENÉ PORTOCARRERO

René Portocarrero (b. Havana, Cuba) Portocarrero began his artistic education at the San Alejandro academy, but left early and is hence considered “self taught.” He put on his first exhibition in 1934, at the Havana Lyceum, beginning a long and fruitful career, which included a 1937 collaboration with Mariano Rodríguez and work as a ‘free studies’ teacher of painting and sculpture. After travels in Haiti, Europe and the United States, he gave his first show to an overseas audience at Julien Levy’s gallery in New York City in 1945. In 1950 he worked with Wifredo Lam, Mariano, Martinez Pedro and Amelia Palaez in the village of Santiago de Las Vegas. In 1961 he had meetings with Fidel Castro in the Jose Marti National Library where they discussed culture. René received lessons in painting from Nicolás Guillén Landrián. In 1977 he worked for the Japan Women’s Association. In 1979 he worked for UNESCO and AIAP. He knew Peggy Guggenheim and in his lifetime, he won “best collection” at the seventh São Paulo Art Biennial (1963), was honoured by the governments of Bulgaria and Poland, and given a seat on UNESCO’s International Association of Fine Art. In 1981 he received the ‘Felix Varela’ prize from Cuba and in 1982 he received the “Aztec Eagle,” Mexico’s highest award. “... To populate their cities and their temples, their palaces and domes, appeared women of tempestuous hairstyles, multiplied to infinity, but never equal, similar to the variations on a theme imagined by the great musicians. And, after handling the color, capturing it, lavishing the paste to the point of making a sculpture, it was -in the most recent period of Portocarrero- that the figures appeared almost colorless, often in black and white, not because it was missing color, but because it cease to be baroque, figures that blend with the vegetation, vines equipped with pulsating humanity. Rene Portocarrero is today one of the great painters of Latin America, who has known how to express, show, what others saw, before him, as a simple catalog of elements with no apparent relationship. Among the paintings and drawings of Portocarrero there is an active relationship that makes them systems of interpretation of a reality.”

78

Alejo Carpentier, 1963.

René Portocarrero, Untitled, 1945, Gouache on paper, 22 x 28.”

CIRO QUINTANA

Ciro Quintana (b. Havana, Cuba, 1965) Founder of Puré Group, Quintana is one of the most iconic Cuban artists of the 80s. Throughout his career, his work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Cuba, the United States, Mexico, Dominican Republic, France, Germany, Peru, and Venezuela, among other countries. Recent shows include: “Resilience The Other Cuba (Minneapolis, 2015), and “Pulse Art Fair” (New York, 2016). His work is part of major collections such as, Peter Ludwig Collection (Cologne, Germany), Leipzig Museum (Germany), Lowe Art Museum (Miami), Cisneros Fontanals Collection (Miami), The Mosquera Collection (Miami), María Luisa Lobo Collection (Miami), Jorge Reynardus Collection (New York and Sarasota), and the Nina Menocal Collection (Mexico).

“Ciro Quintana likes cultural clashes and semantic juxtapositions that propitiate a chain of resignifications forcing the continuous repositioning of that intrusive gaze that is the viewer who scrutinize from the proscenium. The use of the draperies and the stage in the work of Ciro Quintana function not as an element of estrangement but as an invitation to intrusion and voyeurism; Magnificent entrance door that forces us to dare into the other side of the mirror. His iconic series Chronicles of a Cuban Artist in which Ciro Quintana has been working since 2013, is one of the artist’s most prolific series. Making use of the carnavalization, Ciro guides us behind the stage, showing us the swings of the contemporary Cuban art as a diasporic entity.

For this, Ciro Quintana uses the most dissimilar symbols: Greco-Latin mythology, Renaissance painting, Flemish Baroque, Pop art, American comics, and well-rooted icons in Cuban culture such as bear, caiman, flamenco, wolf, snake, deer, and the image of the Republic, summarized in the Phrygian cap, among many others. The substantial series, invariably performed in oil on canvas, stands out, first and above all, for its impeccable technical mastery, being just this savoir faire which allows the artist to fully develop this proposal that we could well qualify as neo-baroque.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Chronicles” by Janet Batet.

80

Ciro Quintana, Chronicles of a Cuban Artist, 2017, oil on linen, 82 x 250 .�

LISYANET RODRÍGUEZ

Lisyanet Rodríguez (b. Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, 1987) graduated from the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in Havana, 2013. She currently lives and works in the United States. Lisyanet’s drawings start from the contemplative imitation of reality to reflect non-traditional notions of beauty, to explore the passing time, and to examine the complexity and fragility of nature. Elements and concepts such as: the body, the pain, the trauma in their relationship to physical and psychological confrontation, are instrumental in her work. Psychological and dramatic themes highlight the widening breach between the ideal life and the real. Recent works deal with the disparity, multiples, the life cycle, and the search for meaning.

“With the Blooming Series, the artist Lisyanet Rodríguez, questions the canons of the Ugly, established in Western culture. From a deep emotional attachment to nature and humanity, she considers that every living being is beautiful, because every birth, flowering -Blooming- is a process of magical essence. Under this premise, she decides - with exquisite technical skill - to create works that project the viewer to a formal ugliness and the artistic representation of it. The audience for seconds is at a receptive crossroads. But she knows how to use the auric value of the art to her advantage. From her canvases and cards she exonerates those deformed beings, in imbalance, incomplete, different, and elevates them to a category of sublime beauty.

The pains, fears and neglects suffered by her figures are vindicated with energetic eagerness. For, like all beings from nature, they have unique qualities, they have a certain beauty.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Blooming” by Gabriela Azcuy.

82

Lisyanet Rodríguez, Holding on, 2016, Charcoal and Acrylic on Canvas. 76 x 44.”

MARIANO RODRÍGUEZ

Mariano Rodríguez (b. in Havana, Cuba, 1912). Avant-garde Cuban painter characterized by his paintings of surrealistic and fauviste roosters. Since boyhood, he was interested in drawing and painting. In 1936 he went to Mexico, where he studied for a year and a half with the muralists Manuel Rodriguez Lozano and Pablo O’Higgins. When he returned to Cuba, his technique bore a close resemblance to that of the modern Mexican masters. In 1938 his painting “UNIDAD” received top honors at the National Exhibit of Painting and Sculpture in Havana. Mariano is part of that generation of Cuban artists who felt the urgency to break with the influences of the Academics; Constantly and tirelessly in search of a vehicle by which to express his personality in the context of a truly “Cuban” expression, in 1941 he started to elaborate on his theme of the roosters, in the early 40’s he was influenced by the great European masters, especially Picasso and Matisse, in 1967 he started his series of “Fruit and Reality,” in 1980 he began the series of the “Masses,” and in the mid eighties, the final “Feast of Love.” Through it all he faithfully continued to strive for essentially “Cuban” elements, the most consistent of which was the virility of the rooster, master of the domestic patio: in every one of his phases Mariano painted a rooster. His work is owned, among others, by the following museums: Guayaquil University, Ecuador, Cali, Colombia, Mexico City, Havana, Managua, Nicaragua, San Francisco, MOMA New York, Kansas City, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Chicago Art Institute, and UNESCO, Paris.

“Mariano’s work, rich in both quantity and quality, varied in its ceaseless quest for new means of expression, exemplifies not only the work of a concrete, individual painter, but the aesthetic career of a good part of a generation of Cuban artists who have striven to save the essence of Cubanness - and to save themselves - by delving deeply into the grounded (and at times, the allegedly metaphysical) roots of our national sense of being.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Retrospectiva del Pintor Cubano” by Jose A. Portuondo.

84

Mariano Rodríguez, Untitled, 1947, Gouache on paper, 22 x 28.”

LOLÓ SOLDEVILLA

Loló Soldevilla (b. in Cuba 1901 - 1971) Loló Soldevilla is considered a seminal figure in Concrete Cuban art. Soldevilla began painting in 1948, and in 1949 traveled to Paris where she encountered contemporary European avant-garde artistic practices — namely, abstraction. Upon her return to Cuba in 1956, Soldevilla and Pedro de Oraa founded Galeria Color-Luz, a gallery solely dedicated to the promotion of abstract art. A few years later she began exhibiting with the group Diez Pintores Concretos, which included artists such as Sandú Darié, Jose Mijares and Rafael Soriano. In 1951, Soldevilla exhibited in Art Cubain Contemporain at Paris’ Musée National d’Art Moderne. Soldevilla’s artistic practice encompasses painting, drawing and collage works. Similar to other Cuban Concretists, Soldevilla rejected the nationalist figurative work of the Vanguardistas and sought to employ a more international abstract vernacular.

“The work by Loló Soldevilla is particularly sui generis and innovative within the Cuban cultural context, as she is one among a rather small group of women whose talented entrance into the creative horizon of the 1950s deserves a prominent place.

With her inventive and irreverent spirit, Loló was at the avant-garde of incessant formal searches that created a unique and innovative language and offered an array of infinite possibilities to our region. In a little more than twenty years of tireless work, Loló was able to inscribe her name in the history of the European avant-garde from the postwar, and in the evolution of Cuban abstract art. Beyond the times she lived in, the work by Loló Soldevilla was without a doubt the forerunner of many things to come and, therefore, it is only right to recognize her today for what she was: a stone thrown to the water that created on its path an infinite number of ripples, infinite circles, infinite echoes. Her efforts to renovate collage, her daring experiments on the utilization of diverse and heterogeneous materials, and her desire to improve the artistic and functional value of pure forms, transformed her name into an accurate and irrefutable representation of the Cuban contribution to universal painting”.

86

Fragment retrieved from the essay “The imaginary world of Loló Soldevilla” by Elsa Vega-Dopico.

Loló Soldevilla, Untitled, 1954, mixed media, 14 x 30.”

REYNERIO TAMAYO

ReynerioTamayo (b, Niquero, Cuba) Visual artist graduated from Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (ENAP) in 1987 and Instituto Superior de Arte de la Habana (ISA) in 1992. Among the most recent personal exhibitions are: Habana-Key West Express, The Studios of Key West, Key West, USA, Zootheby’s, Villa Manuela Gallery, Havana, in 2016, Gangsters in Havana, Collateral to the 11th Havana Biennial, San Carlos de la Cabaña, Cuba, in 2012, The compromised land, Galería Habana, Cuba, in 2011, And Magma mine !!! Villa Manuela Gallery, Havana, Cuba, in 2008. His work is found in numerous public and private collections such as: the National Museum of Fine Arts in Cuba, the National Council of Plastic Arts in Cuba, The Van Reekum Museum, Apeldoorn, Holland, The Gilbert Brownstone Collection of France, The Howard Farber Collection, USA, Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, USA, and Benicio del Toro Collection, Puerto Rico.

“The works of Tamayo have many elements in the backgrounds that share protagonism with the central figures, those are keys to understand the whole. It is a kind of group protagonism, a dialogue of many voices that incorporates figuration and abstraction, portrait and caricature, poster and vignette. Passion for art and mastery of the trade. In his drawings and paintings there is nothing left, the decoration is apparent, and he can take advantage of the visual effect, and even an accidental stain. He is a master of drawing and coloring. I have seen him working, and it’s as if the gods guide his hands, elaborating those complex contortions of mocking spirits.

Of course, we mean those pagan gods, lovers of joke and fun.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition “Cuba Slugger” by José Ramón Alonso Lorea.

88

Reynerio Tamayo, Gulliver II, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 59 x 78.�

RUBÉN TORRES LLORCA

Rubén Torres Llorca (b. Havana, 1957). He studied at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts and at the Higher Institute of Art, both in Havana. He exhibited at Volumen I (1981), the iconic exhibition that revolutionized Cuban art. Some of his solo exhibitions are: “One Of Us Can Be Wrong And Other Essays” (Juan Ruiz Gallery, Miami, 2012), “The Names Have Been Changed to Protect the Guilty” (Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, 2008), “Una historia para niños basada en un crimen real” (Centro Cultural Español, Miami, 2007), and “Easy to Built/Modelo para armar” (Frost Museum of Art, Miami, 2006). He has participated in several group exhibitions such as, I and III Havana Biennials, Sao Paulo Biennial (1989), “Kuba OK” (Stadtische Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, Germany, 1990), “Iconocracia” (CAAM, 2015), and “ConTexto” (Museo Universitario Universidad de Antioquia, Medellin, 2016). His work is part of the collections of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), Ludwig Forum Fur Internationale Kunst (Aachen, Germany), Museo del Barrio (New York), Miami Art Museum, and Frost Museum of Art (Miami), among others.

“Visual art that has an iconographic character bores me. After all, my principal reward as an artist is having fun while maintaining a strong point of view. However, we all have to work within the limitations of our own talent. One of mine is to be a good craftsman, which is a very dangerous limitation, in the sense that you could fall in love with the execution per se. In spite of this, I myself subscribe to William Faulkner’s recommendation: you must kill all your darlings. I enjoy creating an artwork that defies its visual character and somehow self-destructs, that allows me to come close to the dramaturgical dynamic of film. My artworks have a very attractive appearance that is viscerally negated by the irony of the literal subject who inhabits it. It’s like a fairy tale without a message or a happy ending—which is important for me, because I have the same irreverence toward giving life advice as I do to receiving it.”

90

Fragment retrieved from the essay “In Conversation” by Rafael Diaz Casa.

Rubén Torres Llorca, Adorno Número Uno, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 79 x 79.”

JOSÉ VILLA

José Ramón Villa Soberón (b. Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 1950) is a Cuban artist, particularly known for his public sculptures around Havana. He studied at the Escuela Nacional de Arte (English: The National School of Art) in Havana, Cuba and the Academy of Plastic Arts in Prague. He is also a professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. His sculptures, paintings, engravings, drawings and designs are held by the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, and in 1996 he was one of the selected artists in the second Trienal Americana de Escultura in Argentina.

His artwork has been part of many collective exhibitions. In 1969 he was included in the collective exhibitions of painting and esculpture Exposición Escuela Nacional de Arte in the Centro de Arte Internacional, Havana, Cuba. In 1971, he also participated in the Salón Nacional para Artistas Jóvenes. His awards include the Third Prize in the Salón de Profesores e Instructores de Artes Plásticas, Escuela Nacional de Arte (1973); Mention in Sculpture in the VII Salón Nacional Juvenil de Artes Plásticas, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (1978), and First Prize in the II Trienal Americana de Escultura, Argentina (1996).

“The fact that many persons identify José Villa as “the Lennon sculptor” is perfectly normal – because it is true – the fact that he is a rather popular artist – being also the author of El Caballero de Paris, of the Martí at the Fragua and of the Hemingway at the Floridita – is absolutely logical; but to assume him – for the same reason – as a figurative sculptor is a contradiction, one more in the compendium of negations comprised by his long career. The reason being that Villa has been in fact a devastator of stereotypes in his artistic activity, in his professional life and even in his vital projection as a human being.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay “Esculturas de José Villa” by Dra. María de los Ángeles Pereira.

92

José Villa, Euritmia, 2016, copper, 20 x 24 x 16.”

PEDRO VIZCAÍNO

Pedro Vizcaíno (b. Havana, Cuba, 1966). He graduated from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts and the Higher Institute of Art, in Havana. He was founder of Grupo Arte Calle. Throughout his career his work has been exhibited at museums and galleries in the U.S., Spain, Cuba, Mexico and Poland. Recent exhibitions include, “Atopia” (Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona, 2010) and “Wild Child Grafitti” (Figarelli Contemporary. Scottsdale, AZ, 2008). Vizcaíno’s work is part of major collections such as, Nina Menocal Collection (Mexico), Lowe Art Museum (Miami), Museum of Contemporary Art (North Miami), DACRA (Miami Beach), and Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA).

“I choose drawing because it’s the most basic form of human expression. Generally I work on paper with colored pencils and ink, leaving blank spaces that compensate for the lines and spots made by the colored pencils. They exude a passion for color and also for the frenetic spontaneity of children’s drawings.” Pedro Vizcaino is an admirer of the lunatic drawings of madmen and of the spontaneous drawings of children. These drawings want to open a gap or a pathway between figurative art and abstract art. They are drawings that reproduce imaginary characters [as airplanes, cars, handguns, shoes] that convey to us in an ironic, humoristic fashion a vision of the environment of society and history. Colored pencils and ink are the skeleton, the structure of these are driven by ideas that buck the socio-political notions that inform most art and art criticism today. The principal theme in his art is the way in which action becomes part of an image as opposed to the more common reverse approach-using an image to depict some kind of action. In is representation of action and its aural spaces, Vizcaino combines elements of sculpture, drawing, and painting and he freely juxtaposes the frantic textures of a child’s turgid crayon scribbling with images that might otherwise evoke delicacy, eros, and filth.”

Fragment retrieved from the essay written for the exhibition at MAC Art Gallery.

94

Pedro Vizcaíno, Ganguero, 2009, oil stick on canvas, 53 x 81.”

Roxana M. Bermejo, Henry Ballate, Maria Baños and Leonardo Rodríguez.

I need a transparent work that illustrates everything expressed by its artist, that reflect the artist, although not literally.

I have no other way of understanding art, I cannot read it if it is not credible.

Leonardo RodrĂ­guez.

KENDALL ART CENTER Owner and Collector Leonardo Rodríguez Finance and Operations Director Leonardo Rodríguez, Jr. Critical criteria contributed by Roxana M. Bermejo, B.A. Back cover blurb Carol Damian, Ph.D. Art Director and Curator Henry Ballate, M.F.A. Copyediting Odette Artiles, B.A. Museography Kendall Art Center

www.kendallartcenter.org | info@kendallartcenter.com Kendall Art Center -12063 SW 131st Ave Miami, Fl 33186 United States All rights reserved Kendall Art Center, The Rodriguez Collection Copyright © 2018

Across Time

The Rodríguez Collection of Cuban Artists Dedicated to preserving the history and significance of Cuban art, the Rodríguez Collection showcases the work of 40 artists who have established the key tenets of a visual language with global implications that reach beyond the island and its diaspora. Their work spans over 50 years and includes a diversity of styles and media. The artists represent more than a Cuban identity as they come to be recognized in international venues as an affirmation of the island’s long tradition of creativity, academic and technical excellence, even under the worst of circumstances. Cuban artists, on and off the island, from the Vanguardia of the early twentieth century who established a new course of modernism for the country, to the most outstanding artists of the present day, have become part of the Rodríguez Collection and this book serves as official documentation of an artistic and cultural journey revealed through works of art. The Collection is also more than just a selection chosen by a single person, it reflects the community in which so many of the artists now live and work, and a venue for discourse and sharing that continuously develops its curatorial concepts to introduce new ideas, artists and works of art, and bridge the gaps of time and place. Across Time: Cuban Artists from vanguardist to contemporaries promises to be just the beginning of an ever-expanding gathering of art, artists and information critical to understanding and sustaining the artistic trajectory that represents the best of Cuba.

Carol Damian, Ph.D.

Kendall Art Center -12063 SW 131st Ave Miami, Fl 33186 United States - kendallartcenter.org