Art In Cuba

Articles, media mentions, etc on Cuban Art

Naive, candid people?… Cubans!

- By Virginia Alberdi Benítez - The presence of Alicia Leal´s work in the Artemorfosis gallery, in Zurich, and her proximity to a certain poetics of the popular art in Cuba, encourages us to offer a panoramic on the expressions of a visual culture rooted in the Antillean Island. However, before that, we need to offer two explanations. One explanation is about the categories usually used to classify the work of the creators out of the academy. The other explanation points to the necessary distinction among the results of who paints and draws in…Read more …

From Cubanacan to the roads of the world: Tomás, Brey and Bedia

- By Virginia Alberdi Benítez - In 1981 an exhibition held at the International Center of Art in Havana became a reference point in the evolution of visual language in Cuba. Entitled as Volume I, a group of painters1 gathered works of dissimilar aesthetics showing an apparently paradoxical attitude to appropriate the tendencies of the time in the legitimating art centers in Europe and the United States and from them to inquire on the identities of cultures of the so-called Third World. Ten years later, several of the internationally recognized painters of that…Read more …
The Dream of Cubanacán

The Dream of Cubanacán

  – By Virginia Alberdi Benítez – When the biographies of Cuban painters, sculptors and engravers with a greater presence in the international circuits of exhibition and commercialization of the visual arts for the past five decades are reviewed, it is common to find a mutual reference in its formative stages: they have studied at the National Art School (ENA) or the Higher Institute of Art (ISA). Flora Fong, Ernesto Garcia Peña and Gilberto Frómeta, who displayed their works in solo-exhibitions at ArteMorfosis during 2015 and currently are presented side by side in…Read more …
WHERE IS THE STARTING POINT OF CUBAN ART?

WHERE IS THE STARTING POINT OF CUBAN ART?

- By Virginia Alberdi Benítez - The strength of the images of the Cuban contemporary artists and the interest they awaken among collectors, critics and European viewers, as evidenced by the experience of the Artemorfosis Gallery, in Zurich, have a backup history that dates back to the beginnings of the establishment of the nation in the Antillean island, when Cuba was a territory belonging to the Spanish colonial empire. Cuba is called the key for the New World, because of its strategic position at the entrance of the Gulf of Mexico, and it…Read more …
Wifredo Lam – Today

Wifredo Lam – Today

- By Virginia Alberdi Benítez - As time passes, Wifredo Lam confirms his status as one of the most secure values of the Cuban Visual Arts in the global context and remains an essential reference of the vanguards of the Twentieth century. A prevailing trend among art historians, that classifies artistic results in schools and aesthetic trends, often includes Lam within the Surrealist movement. But a close look at his work, taking into account its evolution and the internal dynamics of the images captured in many different formats, will show an irreducible originality,…Read more …
Abstract and Different

Abstract and Different

By Virginia Alberdi Benítez; Translation by Luz María Rodríguez Cabral - With the presence of the paintings by Gilberto Frómeta in the ArteMorfosis gallery, in Zürich, this November, the art lovers of Switzerland and other countries that visit this singular space for the promotion of the contemporary Cuban art have the opportunity of having access, not only to the creations by one of the most active and consistent painters inside and outside Cuba, but also to the impact of Abstraction, one of the aesthetic tendencies from the artistic avant-garde of the XX Century…Read more …