ARTS
Below: Running Heads by Strong-Cuevas
Work Exhibited Across from the United Nations The art of Strong-Cuevas explores inner consciousness, outer space, and communication through space and time. In the words of distinguished art critic Donald Kuspit, “Strong-Cuevas’s sculpture is rooted in primitive art, with its bold structures, expressive directness, communal symbolism, and conviction of cosmic absolutes.” The influence of ancient civilizations – the Egyptians, Aztecs “STRONG-CUEVAS’S and Mayans – is particularly evident SCULPTURE IS ROOTED IN in Strong-Cuevas’s abstract faces PRIMITIVE ART, WITH ITS BOLD and large-scale works, such as her STRUCTURES, EXPRESSIVE ten-foot bronze, Arch III, which was DIRECTNESS, COMMUNAL recently exhibited in Dag HamSYMBOLISM, AND CONVICTION OF COSMIC ABSOLUTES.” marskjöld Plaza across from the United Nations. This past year, her work at Grounds for Sculpture was artfully illuminated as part of the exhibition, “Night Forms: dreamloop by Klip Collective.” The exhibition, described as “an after-hours multisensory experience created between art and nature,” was covered by The New York Times, Barron’s, PBS, and other outlets. Greta Garbo & Balls in Biarritz “A strong personality, very intelligent, opinionated, and
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theatrical like her father.” Strong-Cuevas doesn’t mind this description of herself, culled from the pages of a letter her late brother once sent to a friend. Her father, the Marquis George de Cuevas, was born in Chile and founded the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas in Paris, where he met her mother, Margaret Strong, years earlier. The family spent time between Saint-Germainen-Laye, where Strong-Cuevas was born, her grandfather’s house in Fiesole, Manhattan where they hosted the likes of Salvador Dalí and Greta Garbo, and Biarritz, where her father threw a costume ball no less grand or theatrical than the productions put on by the Grand Ballet. The Cuevas Ball in Biarritz “It was more of a theatrical event than a party,” recalls Strong-Cuevas about the 1953 ball her father gave in Biarritz. “There was a stage, and all the people who had been invited had got themselves dressed in remarkable costumes by the French couturiers — Balmain, Dior, Lelong.” Strong-Cuevas was photographed at the ball by the illustrious fashion photographer Madame D’Ora, wearing a costume by Balmain with a feathered headpiece. Some of the photographs from that evening were part of an exhibition of Madame D’Ora’s work
6/22/22 12:00 AM
