(…) Although many see abstraction as a new trend in his work, the truth is that Diago has been working on it for years. The first “evidence” dates from 1995, a couple of pieces with which he took part in the Juan Francisco Elso National Annual Contest of Contemporary Painting, exhibited in the Havana National Museum of Fine Arts. Paisaje 1 and Paisaje 2 (Landscape 1 and 2), both from the same year, were solved in a similar way as to composition: horizontal format, structure in bands, and a palette tending to ocher colors. Landscape 2 won the Third Prize. (…)
In recent years, Diago has concentrated on the production of abstract work. His most recent pieces feature formal elements of works he had made in the nineties, and he focuses on what he used to compose on the back of the images. The resource of fragmented, cut and stuck fabrics that he used as a base now reappears again as the main character in the composition. (…)
As in the beginning, Diago continues working with elements of his identity from a racial point of view. His criticism of racism has now a more subtle and refined form. It leaves behind the evident graph to concentrate in textures. The results are these pieces, aesthetically very attractive, almost tactile, which visually trap while, at the same time, conveying a message of social criticism similar to that of his most visceral pieces.
