Art OnCuba magazine was officially launched last night in Havana in the framework of the 12th Havana Biennial. Artists, art critics, curators, directors of institutions and collectors gathered at the Cetro Hall in Melia Cohiba Hotel for this event, which made available to the public the latest issue of the magazine a few days before its commercialization in the circuit of bookstores across the United States.
¨We would like to present those who have come to participate in the most important visual art event in our country with this beautiful edition of ArtOnCuba. We are proud to contribute with this magazine; ¨ said Hugo Cancio, founder and chief editor of OnCuba Magazine and ArtOnCuba.
Art OnCuba´s 7th issue, June-August, offers a review of the Havana Biennial. Rather than describing what we would see by these days, the editors decided it was worth trying to answer some questions from the perspective of several specialists: What has meant for Cuban art an event like this? How much does everyone’s perspective on the art produced in the world have been updated, enriched, demolished, and rebuilt? The Biennale continues to generate a lot of curiosity, inside and outside the island. Here and there we still believe in its history, still wait for a turn…
Another vital element in this issue is that continuity is given to a series of interviews and texts about collecting. In the recent history of Cuban art, this -which becomes or implies promotion, exhibition, international recognition of local production-, has a significant role and Art OnCuba 07 draws attention to four figures who have done and perform an interesting work in this sense. Nina Menocal, who since the last year of the eighties began to give visibility and presence in the market to a whole generation of artists who felt incomplete their paths on the island; Jorge Perez, real estate entrepreneur passionate by Latin American art that has subsidized and supported countless art projects; Zé Sacramento, Portuguese gallery owner who was responsible for “moving” Cuban art to Europe and Africa; and Ella Cisneros-Fontanals, president of CIFO (Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation), passionate collector whom we approach with several questions about her abstraction collection.
The magazine also includes comments on exhibitions like the one to inaugurated on Saturday at 8:30 pm by Rocio Garcia at Factoria Habana (The Mission) and profiles of artists from several generations as José Rosabal (who by these days is exhibiting a piece in Havana in the project Detrás del Muro 2), Moisés Finalé, Carlos Quintana, Juan Miguel Pozo, among others.
The cover shows this time a detail of a piece of Roberto Diago, who in recent years has moved us from his works with a language synthesis lesson, human and universal projection; a young artist growing both in his work and international visibility.
This presentation gives continuity to a series of events relating to the publication that have taken place recently. During the Festival of Cuban Culture in New York, organized by the American Friends of the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba, the magazine was presented at the National Arts Club, and a few days later there was a launch in Miami, sponsored by The Related Group.
