RÁUL CORDERO
HAVANA, 1971
Raúl Cordero (born 1971) is a Cuban-born conceptual painter. First known as part of the generation of the 90’s in Cuba, when he began to exhibit his work mainly in Europe and the United States of America. Cordero represents with his work the “other Cuban art”. Far from the standards of the art of the Cuban Revolution, and without falling into the clichés of other artists from inside and outside the island, Cordero samples pretexts capriciously obtained from diverse referential origins (press, magazines, books, television, photography and video) and shows us his work as the result of a recycling, a revival, creating a new reality that refers more to art than to any other apparent content.
His artistic training began in Havana (San Alejandro Academy and Instituto Superior de Diseño) and his influences mix an interest in North American conceptual artists such as John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman or Chris Burden -who later informed his conceptual training- together with elements of the Flemish pictorial tradition of the 12th century, acquired during his postgraduate training in Holland (Graphic Media Development Centre and Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten). Cordero has been a visiting professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana (Cuba), at the San Francisco Art Institute (California) and at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (Ohio, USA).
His work is in the collection of several museums such as the Musée National D’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, Cuba, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA), California, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK). Ghent, Belgium, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno and Museo Extremeño Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (MEIAC), Spain, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California, USA.