VR/ Contemporary Cuban Art

CONTEMPORARY CUBAN ART

Manuel mendive · José bedia · Roberto diago · marta maría pérez bravo · Raúl Cordero · René Peña

It was in 2009 when a connection was established between Galería Artizar and contemporary Cuban art, thanks to the collaboration with the master Manuel Mendive. A fruitful line of work, consisting of four individual exhibitions and an equal number of collective exhibitions, led to the representation of this great artist by the gallery in Spain and Europe. This facilitated subsequent contact with other prominent Cuban masters such as José Bedia, whom Artizar began representing in 2013, René Peña, Juan Roberto Diago, and more recently Raúl Cordero and Marta María Pérez Bravo. Undoubtedly, these are a group of creators with significant international stature, and through them, the gallery has built bridges between the Americas, the Caribbean, the Canary Islands, Spain, and Europe.

This is undoubtedly one of Artizar’s most important and ambitious lines of work, which will surely continue to grow, dispersing projects across galleries, fairs, museums, and biennials worldwide.

In this showroom, you can see a selection of available artworks, all directly related to the studies of the artists we have the pleasure of representing in Spain.

MANUEL MENDIVE

Havana, 1944

It goes without saying that Manuel Mendive Hoyo is, to this day, and has been for several years, one of the most important artists in the history of Cuba. As a direct witness to the significance of Wifredo Lam’s influence on Cuban culture and later on international avant-garde art, Mendive and his art stand as a guide for several subsequent generations of Cuban creators.

In 2014, he celebrated 50 years in his artistic career, a period marked by significant milestones and dates. At the age of just 11, he received the UNESCO Morinaga Society’s Mother’s Tribute Award in Tokyo. He also won the Adam Montparnasse Prize at the XXIV Salon de Mayo in Paris in 1968 and the National Visual Arts Prize of Cuba in 2001. Countless awards adorn his record, along with an uncountable number of individual and collective exhibitions worldwide. Mendive is a regular presence at major international contemporary art fairs such as ARCO Madrid since 1996, Art Miami, and Pinta in London and New York. He is also frequently featured in prominent Latin American art auctions.

Manuel Mendive’s works can be found in highly esteemed collections and museums across the globe. Some examples include the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, PANARTE (Museum of Modern Art in Panama), CAAM (Atlantic Center of Modern Art in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), the Pompidou Center in Paris, the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the José Luis Cuevas Museum in Mexico.

Selection of works

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JOSÉ BEDIA

Havana, 1959

Initiator of a radical transformation of Cuban Art in his time, which he inaugurated with the renowned exhibition “Volumen 1” in which Bedia played a very active role. His passion for indigenous primal cultures was complemented by dedicated anthropological studies in Afro-Transatlantic culture, delving into the faith, religions, and beliefs of the Kongo Rule – in which he was initiated in 1983 – as well as the Rule of Ocha, and the Leopard Men or Abakuas, among many others.

He traveled to Angola as part of the Cultural Internationalist Brigades that supported the Angolan-Cuban War against Namibia and South Africa. His contact with the Mother Continent and the war further stimulated his concerns for the African roots of American culture. This curiosity, after establishing his residence outside his home country (first in Mexico and later in the USA), allowed him to unfold his work in countries such as Peru, Chile, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, and Tanzania.

This wealth of knowledge led him to create a body of work that explores how cultural legacies survive in our present-day and shape us as citizens today. Thanks to the solidity of his work, characterized by a blend of “fabulating stories” – which he calls “alphabetizing lessons” – from the cosmogonic micro-universes of ancestral cultures and their roots in current popular cultures, he has participated in the Havana, Sao Paulo, Venice, and Beijing Biennials, among many others. He has received various awards, residencies, and distinctions that position him as one of the most prestigious and relevant creators of art from the Americas from the second half of the 20th century to the present day.

Whether through his resolute and precise drawing skills, his impactful pictorial capacity, or his expansive, enigmatic, and immersive installations, his work can be found in collections such as the National Museum of Fine Arts (Havana), as well as the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), the Guggenheim, the Tate Modern, the Smithsonian Museum (Washington), the Daros Collection (Zurich), MEIAC, DA2, IVAM, CAAM (Spain), the MOCA, MAM, and PAMM (Miami), where he has been residing since 1993.

Selection of works

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ROBERTO DIAGO

Havana, 1971

Roberto Diago is one of the most renowned contemporary artists in Cuba. Born in 1971, he studied at the San Alejandro Academy in 1990 and currently serves as a Consulting Professor at the Higher Institute of Art in Havana.

The everyday life is the subject matter of his work. He utilizes materials that daily life offers him and bestows them with symbolic significance as an act of cultural resistance. His art reflects his interest in the legacy of African culture brought by slaves to Cuba and how it manifests in Cuban society today.

Diago’s art goes beyond mere aesthetic beauty and assumes a more significant role. It serves as a pretext for anyone who approaches it to reflect on their personal history, that of their country, and even the history of humanity itself. Speaking from his black and enslaved roots, Diago’s sensitivity emerges in a discourse of personal identity. His work allows even the most resistant individuals to experience the Afro-Cuban experience on a personal level.

He has held important exhibitions such as his solo exhibition at the Lowe Museum in Miami and the Clement Foundation in Martinique. He is a regular presence at top art fairs in the United States and Latin America and has showcased his works at fairs such as ARCO Madrid and FIAC Paris, as well as the Venice, Havana, and Dakar Biennales. His artwork can be found in collections including the National Museum of Havana, Deste Foundation in Athens, Brownstone Foundation in Paris, CIFO Collection in Florida, Boston Fine Arts Museum, and Jorge M. Pérez Museum in Miami, among many other internationally renowned collections.

Selection of works

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Raúl CORDERO

Havana, 1971

Raúl Cordero (born in 1971) is a conceptual painter born in Cuba. He first gained recognition as part of the 90s generation in Cuba when he began exhibiting his work primarily in Europe and the United States of America. Cordero represents with his art the “other Cuban art.” Far from the standards of Cuban Revolutionary art and avoiding clichés of other artists from within and outside the island, Cordero samples whimsically obtained pretexts from various reference sources such as press, magazines, books, television, photography, and video. He presents his work as a result of recycling, revival, creating a new reality that refers more to art than any other apparent content.

His artistic education began in Havana (at the San Alejandro Academy and the Higher Institute of Design), and his influences blend an interest in American conceptual artists such as John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman, or Chris Burden – who later informed his conceptual formation – with elements of Flemish pictorial tradition from the 12th century, acquired during his postgraduate studies in the Netherlands (Graphic Media Development Centre and Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten). Cordero has been a visiting professor at the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in Havana, Cuba, the San Francisco Art Institute in California, and the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Ohio, USA.

His artwork is included in the collections of various museums, such as the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA) in California, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK) in Ghent, Belgium, the Atlantic Center for Modern Art and the Extremaduran and Latin American Museum of Contemporary Art (MEIAC) in Spain, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, California, USA.

Selection of works

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MARTA MARía pérez bravo

Havana, 1959

She graduated from the Higher Institute of Art in Havana in 1984, majoring in Painting. In 1995, she left Cuba and settled with her family in Monterrey, Mexico.

Both her photographic work starting from the 1980s and her subsequent contributions to video art represent a continuous personal approach to Cuban popular cults and related universes such as spiritualism. Her projects stem from thorough bibliographic research and direct contact with believers, whose practices, rituals, and worldviews she meticulously studies before processing and using them as materials for the creation of a work that she approaches as a sacred place. From the intersection of the diverse repertoires of practices and religious symbols that surround her and her own experience, a unique poetics emerges that animates themes such as femininity, desire, motherhood, pain, death, play, superstition, or ritual. The artist’s body often becomes the compositional axis, summoning the presence of personal elements and emotions in the context of a work whose iconographic and narrative repertoires transcend the individual to open up to a broader horizon of reception.

In 1988, she began her international career with solo exhibitions at the Carrillo Gil Museum (Mexico), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Peru), and the Museum of Modern Art (Venezuela). In 1989, she represented Cuba at the 3rd Havana Biennial and in 1990 at the 21st São Paulo Biennial (Brazil). That same year, she was invited to be part of the project Art and Cuba Now at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (USA).

Marta María Pérez Bravo’s work has been exhibited at the 4th Havana Biennial, the 5th Istanbul Biennial (Turkey), and the Gwangju Biennial (South Korea). She has exhibited in numerous museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, El Museo del Barrio (USA), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Australia), the Fridericianum Museum (Germany), Műcsarnok Museum (Hungary), the Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), the Museum of Fine Arts (USA), the Wichita Art Museum (USA), the Museum of Fine Arts (USA), the Miami Art Museum (USA), and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA). Her work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, USA), the Museum of Fine Arts (USA), the Museum of Art (Finland), the National Museum of Fine Arts (Cuba), the Ludwig Forum (Germany), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain), the Museo Español e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (Spain), and the Norton Collection.

Selection of works

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rené peña

Havana, 1957

He joined the national photography scene in the late 1980s, leading the new trends in Cuban photography from the 1990s onwards. Initially, he focused on capturing interiors and domestic situations in contemporary Cuba, and later delved into themes such as black identity, sexual ambiguity, and the influence of consumerism and the market through self-portraits.

Among his most important awards are the 1993 Honorable Mention in the UNESCO/ACCU World Photography Contest, the 1996 OLORUM CUBANO Award sponsored by the Cuban Fund for Photographic Image, and the 2002 Grand Prize of the Caribbean Biennial held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

Notable solo exhibitions include “Territorios y cartografías en blanco y negro” in 2006 at the International Fair of Engraving and Contemporary Art Editions in C-5 Gallery, Santiago de Compostela; “Black Album” in 2008 at Santa Fé Gallery, Bogotá; participation in the 10th Havana Biennial with “Urban Scenes” in 2009, and “Blue Child” at Villa Manuela Gallery, Havana in 2010. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions since 1997, including “Colaterales” at Havana Galerie in Zurich in 2006, “Cuba Avant-Garde. The Faber Collection” at the Samuel P. Harn Museum, University of Florida in 2007, “Queloides” at Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center, Havana in 2010, “Without Masks. Contemporary Afrocuban Art from the Von Christierson Collection” at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, and “Cuban Visions” at the Metropolitan Pavilion, New York in 2011.

Selection of works

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VARIOUS

Santiago olazábal, josé rosabal, salvador corratgé, loló soldeviilla, sandú darié, pedro de oraá, jairo alfonso,rubén alpízar, daniel rodríguez collazo.

Selection of works

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