Showing of Works by East Havana Visual Artists (68 pictures)
By Regina Cano
HAVANA TIMES – The Salon exhibition of visual arts in the Mariano Rodriguez gallery, located in the Villa Panamericana in Havana, was interrupted by the restrictions carried out with the arrival of the Covid-19 in Cuba. Here’s another chance to see some of the works that were on display for a short while.
This 12th edition of the showing was inaugurated on March 7, bringing together artists from the visual arts of Habana del Este (East Havana) and for six years it has been open to all creators who wish to appear in it.
This year paid tribute to Rafael Leopoldo Cuadrado Hernandez. This artist, in his ‘80s, taught at the Instituto Superior de Diseño, for some years, where he was also trained, and in his career as a creator he has exhibited with great artists. He was the winner of the First Prize in the second Salon in 2005.
Among the works of the participating artists are various manifestations including oil and acrylic painting, engravings, ink and pencil drawings, and a large presence of photographs. “No distinction is made between the mediums to give opportunity for greater participation,” said the director Mariano Rodriguez.
“This Showing brings together several generations of artists and guests who have carried out projects or are related to the gallery for years,” said Emma Pallí Martínez, a specialist at the gallery for 16 years.
Roberto Diaz Chacon shared that: “The Salon tries to get local artists to be recognized, in addition to showing what is done in the area of visual arts within this part of the capital.”
“The East of Havana –Cojimar, Guiteras and Camilo Cienfuegos- have a very peculiar way of working on crafts and other techniques, not widely used and not very celebrated, which can be considered works of visual arts,” said Chacon.
“We have acquired greater maturity, both in the Salon’s curatorial work, and in the integration of these mediums, with a visual and artistic narration that characterizes and solidifies the quality and diversity of the Salon,” he added.
“Cuadrado”
Rafael Cuadrado Hernandez exhibited: from the series Access Denied “Compilations” (180 x 239 cms), a piece that, being two-dimensional, captures its three-dimensional details, concentrated in the small spaces that make up the work, moving from digital drawing to that made by hand.
Essentially graphic, the frames are interwoven with those that jump in volume, from the tiny to the intricate or surprising, in their concept of transitivity, movement and mutation, “like the cells that make up an organism,” said the artist.
With a common figurative presence and also making use of references to daily life in his own life, the artist maintains a discourse in which some elements are unique, while others are repeated emphasizing the attention of the viewer, as the infinite before the limited. A space that in addition to being intimate holds a total, “the universe that is in everything, in space, in the cosmos, inside people, physically, all those parts that one does not dominate, such as cells… ”, he maintained.
“There is 40 and 50-year-old work there. Little drawings that I scanned and kept. That is my way of working, because those things that I thought 40 years ago, I continue to think about. And I’m still the same, older, but the same. What is changing is the way of expression,” he noted.
“I don’t consider myself an experimental person, I have a work as a mature artist, that speaks of youth, the soul and of thought,” concluded Rafael Hernandez Cuadrado.
(Click on an image to display the gallery.)
Comments are closed.