Segundo Always First

(…) Perhaps many of us remember Segundo as the neo-surrealist of the eighties in Cuba, who little after graduating in the High Institute of Arts was esteemed because of his contribution to the blooming of visual arts in the period. The snapshot I keep of Segundo in the eighties is that of a kid with ambitious eyes that, as Peter Pan kids, was always wearing a sort of handmade pajama, made with fabrics of a project named Telarte, printed with motifs by artists who, like maestro Manuel Mendive, frequently came to print in the René Portocarrero Artistic Serigraphy Workshop, which I ran in Havana. Besides working, Segundo had installed there his home and provisional study. It seems that at daybreak our Peter Pan puts his dynamism and unbounded productivity to test, so every morning we were astonished when discovering new paintings by him hanging on the walls, so many that it seemed to be his individual gallery. It was impossible to restrain his energy and need to say. (…)