Catalog Cuban Painting I. Selection of Masters and Students Presented at Fine Arts

The National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana will present on Friday, September 27, at 4:00 p.m., in the Cuban Art Building, the catalog Cuban Painting I. Selection of Masters and Students.

Corresponding to the exhibition of the same name, which was on view at the Infanta Elena Museum in the Spanish city of Tomelloso between June and August of this year, the book, published by Selvi Ediciones in both English and Spanish, reproduces works by the 18 contemporary Cuban artists who participated in the exhibition, reports the National Museum of Fine Arts.

The roster includes Yasiel Álvarez, Luis Enrique Camejo, Yudel Francisco Cruz, Gustavo Díaz Sosa, Alejandro Gómez Cangas, Vicente Hernández, Alexis Leyva (Kcho), Gerardo Liranza, Alfredo Mendoza, Víctor Manuel Ojeda, Niels Reyes, Javier Rivero, René Francisco Rodríguez, Dagoberto Rodríguez, Yohy Suárez, Omar Tirado, José Omar Torres, and Carlos Zorrilla.

In its more than 350 pages, the book brings together established voices with long careers, young artists venturing into the risky business of critiquing their contemporaries’ work, as well as statements, while offering a repertoire of pieces from the Viñas-Gil and Bernardo Quetglas collections, as well as the personal collections of the creators themselves.

“The common denominator of the group is undoubtedly painting, whose formalizations display a broad and diverse range, nothing sectarian nor contradictory,” notes critic Nelson Herrera Ysla, author of the essay that opens the catalog, and who will present it at the National Museum of Fine Arts.

In his words, “the paths marked by this brief selection of works point to an art produced in Cuba, at times aligned with the context, and with inaccessible spaces of imagination, dream, and a kind of fantasy linked to the surreal. We observe a transfiguration of meanings that inhabit within each author, in possession of greater creative freedom,” says Herrera Ysla.

Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez