ART OnCuba 09

A painter moves away from his brushes for twenty years to then retake them with greater energy. A young artist moves between action and painting withthe subtlety of breeze. The island and its art system had almost forgotten the creator who was a referent in the experimentation with the limits between art and design in the last decade of the past century and, little by little, are retaking the approach, are recovering a place for his proposal.

Moving the perspective once and again is imperative. As many times as required. Artists changing how they see them selves, reorganizing in acontext which constantly evaluates and tries to define them. We, in deed, reevaluating and trying to outline a history of Cuban art, in which the “concurrent fate” also will suggest, or determine, a change of topic, a conceptual turn, a leading image. Although it is a type of very conditioned fate, almost always very convenient.

Changing the point of view while going along, in keeping with the changesof reality it self, this time we reach several groups of texts that, in our opinion, may give the reader a perspective of what has taken place in recent times on the usual spaces and in those now opened for Cuban art, as well as throwing light on rather marginalized topics as team creation on theengraving workshops.

Although the former edition of Art OnCuba devoted many of its pages to offer an account of what happened during the Twelfth Havana Biennial, in this case references of the event again appear in the analysis of worksby artists like Elizabet Cerviño, Adrián Fernández, Lorena Gutiérrez, Frank Martínez, Rachel Valdés and Ariamna Contino, all of them very young.

We can say that this magazine is marked by the presence of some of the most prominent and interesting voices in Cuban young art. Some of these names are listed in the most disseminated top ten that some specialists have risked to define in recent times. It is really worth the while to deeply explore whatis happening with them. And, in tune with that purpose, our “youngest”cover shows a work made some years ago by Elizabet Cerviño that, in our opinion, is one of her better achieved “experiments” in the connection between performance and painting, one of her most beautiful pieces. Some exhibitions held our interest, among them Empire by Enrique Martínez Celaya and Surface Body/Action Space by José Parla, both in New York, as well as the presentation of the most recent work by Alfredo Sosabravo in the Vatican and the edition of a luxurious book on his oeuvre.

Also a volume, or several of them, thought by architect Hermes Mallea to show in detail the “then and now” of Cuban houses. The three months in which this edition will be available in book stores in the entire United States begin with Art Basel Miami Beach. From now on weask ourselves what will happen with Cuban art in market terms during this so close and diverse meeting. And we will soon try out our report on it.