95th Birthday of Cuban Visual Artist Manuel Vidal

Cuban visual artist Manuel Vidal would have celebrated his 95th birthday on June 24th. Born in Havana, the painter, draftsman, engraver, and designer began to gain recognition on the national art scene in the 1950s.

In the words of curator Roberto Cobas Amate, who describes him as a «solitary personality of undeniable magnetism,» Vidal displayed «a figuration of vigorous and agile strokes, of obvious expressionist affiliation, which anticipates the arrival of the expressive-grotesque current in the Cuban context.»

Cobas Amate recalls that Manuel Vidal shared aesthetic affinities and concerns with another isolated figure: Raúl Milián. Both were «illuminators» in the artistic environment of the time, in which abstraction in all its varieties dominated.

In the work En Pareja besándose, which the museum holds, Cobas Amate explains that «there is an angular, hard, corrosive drawing in the treatment of the theme of love. There is a libidinous ferocity in the kiss of this pair of lovers that marginalizes any idealization of sincere tenderness.»

Source: Monthly Bulletin No. 5 / The Open Window of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba.

Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez