[…] “La Siempre Habana was founded—Luis says—under the premise that the artist had the word; we channel what he wants to do, so we even have transformed painters into engravers.” But the stock from which La Siempre Habana comes, now in its fifteenth anniversary, has many precedents and links weaved between Havana and Mexico. Since Luis arrived in Mexico in 1991 he remembers having printed silk-screens in his own home; later, right there, in 1998, he made one, by Carlos García, with a large format. Later Nelson Domínguez arrived in Mexico and Ramón Carvallo had the idea of making other editions with a giant size by Nelson himself,
Zaida del Río and Roberto Fabelo.
Then Nelson proposed to set the workshop in Havana, but the island had not yet left the serious economic crisis of the nineties. “And if being there I have no more burlap, what do I do?—Luis Miguel wondered—. I looked for financing with Mister Cuitláhuac Rangel and decided to set it up here. So, on August 14, 2000, I opened its doors in Coyoacán in premises two blocks from the cathedral, in Presidente Carranza Street No. 90.”
[…] “We began with editions of 75 copies—Luis continues—by artists José L. Bustamante and Víctor Chaca for the Oscar Román Gallery, but simultaneously I was making fifty copies of Bemba Colorá (Red Lips), a work by Choco (Eduardo Roca) which I finished before, in two days, and we luckily called for the first signature, accompanied by a tremendous party.”
[…] Apart from those already mentioned, I have been able to examine splendid works by other Cubans, among them Kcho, Adigio Benítez, Ever Fonseca, Ángel Ramírez, García Peña and
Raimundo Orozco.
“In 2005 I also did several editions of Mexican artists, as an assignment of Arte y Naturaleza, Madrid… Víctor Guadalajara and Antonio Díaz Cortés come to my mind, although works from my printing presses by Cuevas, Vicente Rojo, Sergio Hernández, Raúl Anguiano, Demián Flores, Juan Sebastián Barberá and British Joy Laville had already been made. Among Mexicans and Cubans, the workshop has printed more than eighty authors.”
“The artist is the one who defines prices—Luis points out—, we go half-and-half, 50% of the print run for him and the rest for the Workshop, without money mediating, the Workshop puts everything… then I go out to look for someone to buy my part.”
