A Look at Cuban Reality with Intelligence and Insight

The exhibition Con doble sentido, by Manuel Hernández Valdés, winner of Cuba’s National Prize for Fine Arts, opened this Thursday at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Cuba, under the curatorship of Daisvel Pérez Álvarez.

According to the exhibition catalog, “there are artists whose work eventually becomes part of a nation’s memory. Hernández Valdés belongs to that small group of creators who have known how to look at Cuban reality with uncommon intelligence and insight, and who have found in humor a way to observe, question and preserve what defines an era.”

His work has accompanied several generations and continues to reveal, with remarkable relevance, many of the contradictions, gestures and ways of understanding everyday life.

It is from that perspective that the exhibition takes shape: a show bringing together drawings, paintings, sculptures and ceramics from a career spanning more than six decades. More than a chronological journey, the exhibition offers a chance to discover the visual and conceptual richness of a body of work that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of graphic humor to occupy an essential place in Cuban art.

Con doble sentido is an opportunity to reconnect with one of the country’s most important artists, as well as to approach a body of work in which each image still retains its power to surprise, move and generate new readings over time.

Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez