WIFREDO ARCAY
CUBAN STRUCTURES
WIFREDO ARCAY CUBAN STRUCTURES
ARCAY
Arcay is the Paganini of white and of the millimetre. Arcay doesn’t like horizons packed in straw. Straight away he starts to get them out of the straw. Arcay doesn’t like wrong dimensions not frogs the size of a man the peeping toms of the double-bass. Arcay likes white the beautiful austere sculptures of Arp. Arcay doesn’t like monster bouquets bouquets of Eiffel Towers. Ah the white bass drums the watches the white alarm-clocks at four in the morning! Arcay likes las personas de buen gusto. Arcay is the perfection of Cuba’s cubists.
A poem by the French artist & poet Jean Arp 6 October 1962 Translation by Timothy Adès
INTRODUCTION by Abigail McEwen “We were like a political minority in exile, the Fidel Castros of Constructivism looking for a landing place,” Denise René recalled of the artists whom she championed at her eponymous Paris gallery at the start of the 1950s.1 Against the trending fashion of Tachisme and its improvisational, informel sensibility, René positioned the intellectual rigor of geometric abstraction, practiced by her gallery’s international stable of artists, within Constructivist narratives of perception, mechanisation, and movement. In line with the democratising impulse behind her promotion of the “Multiple,” a work intended for mass-scale production at an accessible price, she began to work with the Cuban émigré Wifredo Arcay in the mid-1950s to produce silkscreen editions of hard-edge and optical abstraction by artists such as Jean Arp, Julio Le Parc, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Victor Vasarely. Arcay had introduced serigraphy to France by 1953 with the publication of an album of prints by sixteen eminent Ecole de Paris artists commissioned by the influential editor of the journal Art d’Aujourd’hui, André Bloc. “For me that period meant music every day,” Arcay reminisced of his early years in Paris, where he had arrived on a grant in 1949, and of his first encounters with its historical avant-garde.2 Assimilating within an emerging generation of younger, abstract artists, he worked simultaneously as painter and printmaker, engaging transatlantic discourses on arts integration and the social, participatory function of art in the world. Between Paris and Havana, his work commuted across transnational networks of geometric abstraction
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as it evolved from easel painting into the wood structures that catalysed the expansion of his practice into architectural space. Inasmuch as Arcay’s acclaim and productivity as a screenprinter have in some measure superseded interest in his other projects, the trajectory of his work from the 1950s and 1960s illuminates the synchronicities between painting and printmaking during this period and, no less, the transnational reach of Cuban abstraction. Arcay alit upon Paris at a moment of widespread aesthetic reappraisal as artists sought to re-position themselves vis-à-vis the prewar avant-garde and its modernist legacy. Through his teachers Léopold Kretz and Ossip Zadkine at the Grande Chaumière, where he studied in 1949-50, Arcay came into contact with the Ecole de Paris and its ensconced practices of abstraction. Reconstituted as a postwar project and girded by an ethos of liberation, inflected politically by the Stalinist threat and memories of German occupation, this revived abstraction posited a line from postCubist composition to Constructivist models of participatory art and social commitment.3 Among the early exponents of this collective approach to aesthetic engagement was the Atelier d’Art Abstrait, founded in 1950 by Jean Dewasne and Edgard Pillet in Montparnasse. The Atelier offered instruction in the technology of paint (pigments, binders, varnish) and organised “visites-dialogues” with elder-generation artists such as Auguste Herbin, Alberto Magnelli, and Vasarely as well as focused discussions around the work of its younger pupils, the “Groupe de Jeunes de l’Abstrait,” among them
Victor Vasarely © André Morain
Jean Arp and Wifredo Arcay © André Morain
Arcay, Yaacov Agam, and Pascual Navarro.4 Its advocacy of collaborative, social values within geometric abstraction anticipated the formation of the Groupe Espace, by Bloc and Félix Del Marle, one year later around similar principles related to the integration of art and everyday life. Arcay joined the group in 1953; notable among its international membership were Marcel Breuer, Sonia Delaunay, Cícero Dias, Walter Gropius, Fernand Léger, Richard Neutra, and Carlos Villanueva.5 Against a backdrop of rationalist reconstruction and urbanization in Paris and across Europe, the group’s concern for the human conditions of
public and private life came to be epitomised in its advancement of a synthesis between abstract art and architecture. In its social orientation and global horizons, the group provided a formative point of reference for Arcay as he began to define mutually responsive practices of serigraphy and painting. “I find that serigraphy is a means which resembles our day and time,” Arcay observed, and unquestionably its cooperative, re-creative process shaped the evolution of his painting as it moved into architectural space. Constructivist precepts of synthesis and collectivity, drawn from the Atelier
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d’Art Abstrait and the Groupe Espace, materialised first in his silkscreen editions. The success of his initial portfolio for Bloc, Maîtres d’Aujourd’hui (1953), an edition of silkscreen prints after paintings by such artists as Arp, Kandinsky, Klee, and Mondrian, led to a second volume, Jeunes Peintres d’Aujourd’hui (1954), which positioned a younger generation (among them, Dewasne, Pillet, and Vasarely) in their wake.6 “For me, the originality of a serigraph lies in the direct participation of the artist in everything that happens,” Arcay explained. “He changes his mind, he changes colors, he changes shapes. And when it’s finished, sometimes you have to write it off and start over.”7 The synergies of revision−in practice, of moving from traced photograph to colour drawing and then cutting stencils for each colour and printing by hand–involved the artist at every step. Beyond the technical and theoretical considerations of serigraphy, the artists were “stunned by the colours−they were flat, brilliant,” Arcay noted; no doubt the color saturation and precisely cut edges ideally suited the optical and kinetic art cultivated by Denise René.8 Yet if serigraphy was a revelation for the Ecole de Paris, the advantages of these collaborations accrued to Arcay as well. Early oil paintings trace his progression from the painterly, translucent atmospherics of Alroa to the flatter opacity of works like Israel, in which blocks of colour become more crisply defined, and the harder-edged Treggub-I. The sharper angles and linearity of Composición abstracta en negro project an increasingly dynamic, spatial energy: in its patterned asymmetry and contrasting color fields, it tacks easily from Cubist collage toward the contemporary mobile
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and three-dimensional work by Agam and Pol Bury. Although an adept in post-Cubist abstraction−Arp declared him “the perfection of Cuba’s Cubists”− Arcay abandoned easel painting in 1956 in favor of collectively designed, public works intended for environmental space.9 Thus, his wood structures of the later 1950s and early 1960s are best understood as mural propositions for the new residential buildings rising rapidly in response to the city’s decade-long housing crisis. Arcay partnered frequently during these years with the architect Jean Ginsberg, a Corbusien adherent who designed numerous apartment buildings in postwar Paris (notably, concentrated in the sixteenth arrondissement). With letters typically reversed, the titles of these reliefs sometimes recognise his family (Valérie, Michèle, Jerôme) and artistic circle (Arp, Denise [René]), their citations an acknowledgment of those close to him. It is tempting to see in the multiform structures of the 1950s a distillation of the modernising urban landscape: apartment blocks placed in a grid of traffic lanes and open spaces, movement channeled through vertical and horizontal passages set in strata of shallow relief. The graphic geometry of Etnairav, for example, suggestively hypostatises the flow of energy, diffused from the taut horizontality of the polychrome bars at the top of the structure through the thickening black shapes below them. The relation of colors and shapes was earlier tested in a silkscreen (Sans titre), an inversion of the typical sequence of production but for Arcay an intuitive application of serigraphy in the service of painting. By the early 1960s, his
Exhibition view - Wifredo Arcay - Galerie Denise René 1962 © André Morain
structures became increasingly spare, reduced to fewer shapes−e.g., Proposition II, a playful variation on Soto’s contemporary reliefs−and to monochromes that trod within the modernist lineage of “black paintings” from Kazimir Malevich to Ad Reinhardt. As Constructivist prototypes, the structures embedded Arcay’s most advanced propositions for a public art able to project “the soul of the multitude,” as Vasarely wrote, “to be the visual signification of human community.” Arcay maintained a steady exhibition schedule during these years that radiated from Paris to
Havana, his works channeling complementary discourses about arts integration and abstraction. He opened his first solo exhibition, at the Galerie Arnaud (Paris), in 1952 and showed early on at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles (1951-54), a major venue for geometric abstraction; under the auspices of Denise René, he participated in group exhibitions in Leverkusen (1959) and Paris (1961) before opening a solo show at her Paris gallery in November 1962. Cuba included him in a number of group exhibitions sent abroad, beginning with Art cubain contemporain (Paris: Musée National d’Art Moderne, 1951) and including the São Paulo Bienal
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Denise René, Jean Arp, Wifredo Arcay, Marguerite Arp 1962 © Atelier Archive
(1955) and Cuban Tempos (1956), which traveled across the United States. His work appeared in Havana by the time of his solo exhibition at the Lyceum (1954), and he was quickly enfolded within local debates around modernization and its corollaries of concrete art and urban planning. Although artists such as Mario Carreño, Luis Martínez Pedro, and Sandú Darié had promulgated abstraction in Cuba since the start of the decade, momentum built in the wake of Loló Soldevilla’s return to Havana in 1956 with works by many of the Ecole de Paris artists−including Arcay−and her establishment, with the young artist Pedro de Oraá,
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of the Galería Color-Luz. A pioneering outpost of geometric abstraction, the gallery nurtured a multi-generational group of Cuba’s vanguardia artists and served as the informal headquarters of the group Los Diez Pintores Concretos, active between 1959 and 1961.11 A satellite member of “Los Diez,” Arcay was included in its exhibitions and, almost certainly, involved in the development of its broader, socialist agenda. Like the Groupe Espace, Los Diez foregrounded the social reality of their work, railing against the “fallacy of the ivory tower” and affirming their practice as a transformative intervention into−not a reflection of, nor an escape
from−the world. They declared themselves for anonymity, sharing authorship with each other and the spectator; their works unfolded in real time, collapsing the distinctions of inside and outside, form and space.12 No less than in Paris, arguments for arts integration emphasised its democratising promise, the potential for art to not only inhabit, but to positively shape the patterns of everyday life.
Jean Fautrier, and Pierre Soulages 4
Marc Ducourant, “L’art d’Edgard Pillet,” in Edgard Pillet
(Grenoble: Musée de Grenoble, 2001), 12 5
See André Bloc, Espace: Architecture, formes, couleur (Biot:
La Société Parisienne d’Imprimerie, 1954) 6
Maîtres d’Aujourd’hui included a single work by each the
following artists: Hans Arp, Giacomo Balla, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, Auguste Herbin, Wassily
Arcay occupied a singular, contrapuntal position as a Cuban concreto in Paris. In serigraphy, he plied a medium whose process−collaborative, reproductive, multiple−trucked with contemporary dialogues around arts integration running from postwar Paris to pre-Revolutionary Havana. Inseparable from his printmaking, his painting projected a participatory ethos into public space, his “propositions” aligned with the Constructivist vision of a harmonious and, admittedly, utopian world. In presenting this work anew, Wifredo Arcay: Cuban Structures asserts the artist’s remarkable place as both creator and conduit within the transatlantic history of geometric abstraction.
Kandinsky, Paul Klee, František Kupka, Fernand Léger, Alberto Magnelli, Piet Mondrian, Francis Picabia, Sophie TaeuberArp, Théo Van Doesburg, and Jacques Villon. Sixteen artists were included in Jeunes Peintres d’Aujourd’hui: André Bloc, Silvano Bozzolini, Georges Brueil, Jean Dewasne, Jean Deyrolle, Cícero Dias, Natalia Dumistreco, Alexandre Istrati, Robert Jacobsen, Joseph Lacasse, Jean Leppien, Marie Raymond, Richard Mortensen, Edgard Pillet, Serge Poliakoff, and Victor Vasarely. 7
Arcay, quoted in Je vous écris, n.p
8
Reba Williams and Dave Williams, “The Later History of the
Screenprint,” Print Quarterly 4, no. 4 (December 1987): 389 9
Jean Arp, Wifredo Arcay (Paris, Galerie Denise René, 1962)
10
Victor Vasarely, “Arcay et la re-création,” Art et
Architecture 12 (April 1957): 12 Notes: 1
Denise René, “An Interview with Denise René: A Leading
11
“Los Diez” included the following artists: Pedro Alvarez,
Wifredo Arcay, Salvador Corratgé, Sandú Darié, Luis Martínez
European Gallery Owner Talks to Jean Clay,” Studio
Pedro, Alberto Menocal, José Mijares, Pedro de Oraá, Loló
International 175, no. 899 (April 1968): 194
Soldevilla, and Rafael Soriano. José Rosabal later replaced
2
Wifredo Arcay, quoted in Je vous écris, ed. Francis Delille
(Paris: Herscher, 1986), n.p 3
Postwar abstraction also, of course, encompassed the
informel strand represented by such artists as Hans Hartung,
Alvarez 12
Pedro de Oraá, “Una experiencia plástica: Los Diez
Pintores Concretos,” in Visible e invisible (Havana, Letras Cubanas, 2006), 118
11
Wifredo Arcay in the studio Š Atelier Arcay
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PLATES
“TREGGUB-I” 1950 Oil on canvas 65 x 92 cm 25 5/8 x 36 1/4 inches Signed, titled and dated with notes on reverse
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17
“ALROA”
c. 1950 Oil on canvas 65 x 100 cm 25 5/8 x 39 3/8 inches Titled with notes on reverse
18
19
“ISRAEL”
c. 1950 Oil on canvas 36 x 32 cm 14 1/8 x 12 5/8 inches Titled on reverse
20
21
“Composicion Abstracta en Negro� (variation) 1951 Oil on board 56 x 67 cm 22 x 26 3/8 inches Signed and dated 51 - Paris lower right
22
23
Untitled 1955 Oil on board 72 x 48.5 cm 28 3/8 x 19 1/8 inches Signed and dated Paris-55 lower right
24
25
“Homage à J. Arp” 1957 Oil on card in relief laid on board 36 x 22 cm 14 1/8 x 8 5/8 inches Signed, titled, dated with notes on reverse
26
27
Untitled 1958 Serigraph on card laid on board Unique 38 x 31 cm 15 x 12 1/4 inches Signed and dated lower right
28
29
“ETNAIRAV� (project for mural) 1959 Latex paint on plywood in relief 90 x 82 x 8 cm 35 3/8 x 32 1/4 x 3 1/8 inches Signed and dated with notes on reverse
30
31
“ELEHCIM” 1961 Oil on wood in relief 62 x 78 x 8 cm 24 3/8 x 30 3/4 x 3 1/8 inches Signed, dated and title on reverse Galerie Denise René label on reverse Exhibited: Galerie Denise René, Paris, Structures, 1961 Galerie Denise René, Paris, Wifredo Arcay, 1962
32
33
“Proposition II” 1962 Oil on wood in relief 36.5 x 68 x 6 cm 14 3/8 x 26 3/4 x 2 3/8 inches Exhibited: Galerie Denise René, Paris, Wifredo Arcay, 1962
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35
“RELIEF NOIR FRANGE BLANCHE” 1962 Oil on wood in relief 75 x 70 x 5.5 cm 29 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 2 1/8 inches Galerie Denise René label on reverse Exhibited: Galerie Denise René, Paris, Wifredo Arcay, 1962
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37
“NOLLAV” 1962 Oil on wood in relief 94.5 x 52.5 x 7 cm 37 1/8 x 20 5/8 x 2 3/4 inches Galerie Denise René label on reverse
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LIST OF PLATES
P 17
“TREGGUB-I”
“Composicion Abstracta en Negro”(variation)
1951
Oil on canvas
Oil on board
65 x 92 cm
56 x 67 cm
25 5/8 x 36 1/4 inches
22 x 26 3/8 inches
P 19
P 25
Untitled
“ALROA”
c. 1950
1955
Oil on canvas
Oil on board
65 x 100 cm
72 x 48.5 cm
25 5/8 x 39 3/8 inches
28 3/8 x 19 1/8 inches
P 21
P 27
“ISRAEL”
“Homage à J. Arp”
c. 1950
1957
Oil on canvas
Oil on card in relief laid on board
36 x 32 cm
36 x 22 cm
14 1/8 x 12 5/8 inches
40
P 23
1950
14 1/8 x 8 5/8 inches
P 29
Untitled
P 35
“Proposition II”
1958
1962
Serigraph on card laid on board (Unique)
Oil on wood in relief
38 x 31 cm
36.5 x 68 x 6 cm
15 x 12 1/4 inches
14 3/8 x 26 3/4 x 2 3/8 inches
P 31
“ETNAIRAV” (project for mural)
P 37
“RELIEF NOIR FRANGE BLANCHE”
1959
1962
Latex paint on plywood in relief
Oil on wood in relief
90 x 82 x 8 cm
75 x 70 x 5.5 cm
35 3/8 x 32 1/4 x 3 1/8 inches
29 1/2 x 27 1/2 x 2 1/8 inches
P 33
P 39
“ELEHCIM”
“NOLLAV”
1961
1962
Oil on wood in relief
Oil on wood in relief
62 x 78 x 8 cm
94.5 x 52.5 x 7 cm
24 3/8 x 30 3/4 x 3 1/8 inches
37 1/8 x 20 5/8 x 2 3/4 inches
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WIFREDO ARCAY BIOGRAPHY Born 10th October 1925, Havana, Cuba Moved to Paris in 1949 Died 21st March 1997, Paris , France 1943-45
Studied painting and sculpture at the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro,
Havana 1945
1st prize for sculpture San Alejandro, Havana
1946
1st prize for sculpture Salón Leopoldo Romañach, Havanaá
1949
First silkscreen in collaboration with Victor Vasarely at Denise René, Paris
1949-50
Went to the sculpture studio of Léopold Kretz et Ossip Zadkine at the Académie at
the Grande-Chaumière, Paris
1951
1st prize - competition Helm & Persitz, architects for wall in Havana
1950-52
Went to the abstract art studio of Jean Dewasne and Edgard Pillet at the Académie de
la Grande-Chaumière, Paris
1952
First screen printing studio at the publisher André Bloc rue de l’Observatoire in Meudon,
France 1953
First silkscreen album Maîtres de l’art abstrait created with Jean Arp, Giacomo Balla,
Robert et Sonia Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, Auguste Herbin, Vassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee,
František Kupka, Fernand Léger, Alberto Magnelli, Piet Mondrian, Francis Picabia, Sophie
Taeuber-Arp, Theo Van Doesburg, Jacques Villon for the edition Art Today by André Bloc
Internship at the factory of Sèvres, France
Joins the Space Group
Moves his studio to 12 rue Louis Hubert, Vélizy, France
2nd prize - competition Wall Space Group, Paris. (Architect Jean Ginsberg)
1954
Created the Cerámica Cubana studio with Amelia Peláez et Luis Martínez Pedro,
Havana
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Second silkscreen album created with André Bloc, Silvano Bozzolini, Georges Breuil, Jean
Dewasne, Jean Deyrolle, Cicero Dias, Natalia Dumitresco, Alexandre Istrati, Robert
Jacobsen, Joseph Lacasse, Jean Leppien, Marie Raymond, Richard Mortensen, Edgard
Pillet, Serge Poliakoff, Victor Vasarely for the edition Art Today
Mural at 28 rue Chardon Lagache, Paris. (Architect Jean Ginsberg)
1955
Album N°1, 12 serigraphs, Victor Vasarely, Éditions Denise René, Paris
1956
Venezuela, 12 serigraphs, Victor Vasarely, Éditions Denise René, Paris
1957
Piet Mondrian, 12 serigraphs, Éditions Denise René, Paris
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, 10 serigraphs, Éditions Denise René, Paris 1958-61
Member of the group Diez Pintores Concretos, Havana
1959
Jean Arp, 12 serigraphs, Éditions Denise René, Paris
Mural at 54-56 avenue de Versailles, Paris. (Architecte Jean Ginsberg)
1960
Res et Signa, 10 serigraphs, Richard Mortensen, Éditions Denise René, Paris
1961
Auguste Herbin, 12 serigraphs, Éditions Denise René, Paris
Kassak – Vasarely, 12 serigraphs, Éditions Denise René, Paris Suite de six, 6 serigraphs, Richard Mortensen, Éditions Denise René, Paris Sept à Venise, 7 serigraphs, Richard Mortensen, Éditions Denise René, Paris Intimes étendues,10 serigraphs, Michel Seuphor, Éditions Denise René, Paris 1963
Moved from his studio in St. Escobille, France
From this year he devoted primarily to screen printing for his artist friends
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 1952
Galerie Arnaud, Paris
1954
Galerie Colette Allendy, Paris
Lyceum, Havana 1962
Galerie Denise René, Paris
GROUP EXHIBITIONS 1950
Jubilé international de la Cité Universitaire, Paris
Salon des Surindépendants, Paris
Salon de l’art libre, Paris
Manifestation d’art, Pavillon Monaco, Cité Universitaire, Paris
AMBIGUITÉS oeuvre en collaboration avec Victor Vasarely, Galerie La Demeure, Paris 1951
Art cubain contemporain, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris
Bienal hispanoamericana de arte Madrid, Spain
1952
Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris
43
Exhibition poster Galerie Arnaud, Paris, 1952
44
Exhibition catalogue Salon de RĂŠalitĂŠs Nouvelles, Paris, 1952
Exhibition catalogue III Biennale São Paulo, 1955
Exhibition catalogue Art latino-américain, Musée d’art Moderne, Paris, 1962
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46
1953
Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris
1954
Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Paris
Groupe espace, Biot
1955
Galeria Habana, Havana
3ª Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil
Cuba en Tampa: La feria del progreso, Tampa, Florida USA
Artistes étrangers en France, Petit Palais, Paris
1956
Homenaje en memoria de Guy Pérez Cisneros, Lyceum, Havana
Cerámica Cubana y Joyas, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana
Pintura de hoy, Vanguardia de la Escuela de París, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Havana
Salon d’automne marocain, Casablanca, Morocco
VIII Salón Nacional Pintura y Escultura, Havana
1957
Micro-Salon d’Avril, Galerie Iris Clert, Paris
50 ans de peinture abstraite, Galerie Creuze, Paris
Librería Cruz Del Sur, Caracas, Venezuela
Exposition inaugurale Pintura y escultura cubana, Galería de Arte Color-Luz, Havana
1958
2 expositions à Galería de Arte Color-Luz, Havana
- El Arte Abstracto en Europa
- Exposición Aniversario
1959
Denise René expose, Städtisches Museum, Leverkusen, Germany
Arkitektur og billedkunst i samspill, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway
Arkkitechturri ja kuvataide yhteistoiminnassa, Taidehalli, Helsinki, Finland
Diez pintores concretos exponen pinturas y dibujos, Galería de Arte Color-Luz, Havana
1960
Diez Pintores concretos, Biblioteca Pública Ramón Guiteras, Matanzas, Cuba
Art construit, Galerie Saint-Laurent, Brussels, Belgium
Le Relief, Galerie XXe Siècle, Paris
1961
Art Cubain contemporain, Galerie du Dragon, Paris
Structures, Galerie Denise René, Paris
1962
Structures, Städtisches Museum, Leverkusen, Germany
Le Relief 2e exposition, Galerie XXe Siècle, Paris
Art latino-américain à Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris
Arcay Gerstner Calvo Tomasello, Galerie Denise René, Paris
1986
35 ans après, edition of the anniversary album with Yaacov Agam, César, Jean-Michel
Folon, Peter Klasen, Jacques Monory, Raymond Moretti, Hervé Télémaque, Victor Vasarely,
Vladimir Velickovic and retrospective exhibition of serigraphy made by Arcay, Éditions 35, Espace
Cardin, Paris
FIEST, Foire Internationale de l’Estampe, Conciergerie, Paris
1986
Muestra Retrospectiva del Atelier Arcay, Galería Habana, Segunda bienal de la Habana, Havana
1987
SAGA 87 FIAC Édition, Grand Palais, Paris
1989
Hommage à Victor Vasarely 1950-1988 et à son sérigraphiste W. Arcay, Galerie Lahumière, SAGA
89 FIAC Édition, Grand Palais, Paris
1991
Che Guevara (Alberto Korda, Humberto Castro, Arcay) , Galerie Nesle, Paris
2002
La Razón de la Poesía, Diez Pintores Concretos Cubanos, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana
2010
La Otra Realidad, Una historia del Arte Abstracto Cubano, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana
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THE MAYOR GALLERY since 1925 21 CORK STREET FIRST FLOOR LONDON W1S 3LZ T: +44 (0)20 7734 3558 F: +44 (0)20 7494 1377 info@mayorgallery.com www.mayorgallery.com Printed on the occasion of the exhibition WIFREDO ARCAY CUBAN STRUCTURES 13 OCT - 20 NOV 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publishers or copyright holders. Edition of 500 Introduction © Abigail McEwen Poem Translation © Timothy Adès Works © Wifredo Arcay Photography © Richard Valencia (pg 17, 21 , 27, 29, 35, 37) Photography © Alberto Martinez (pg 19, 23, 25, 31, 33, 39) Special thanks to Jérôme Arcay, Alberto Martinez and Francisco Arevalo All dimensions of works are given height before width before depth The colour reproduction in this catalogue is representative only Designed by Jamie Howell and Christine Hourdé Printed by Birch Print, Heritage House, DE7 5UD ISBN: 978-0-9927984-9-9