Humberto Calzada, engineer by profession, said to be lucky to become a painter thanks to exile.
Lima, Peru – the painter Humberto Calzada, considered one of the key names of Cuban culture in Miami, died this Sunday at the age of 81.
Humberto, an engineer by profession, was lucky to become a painter. According to His own words -and taking into account the success of his plastic work-it was also lucky to exile, because without exile, he said, perhaps he would never have been a painter.
Born on May 25, 1944, his family left Cuba in 1960 after the triumph of the Castro Revolution, becoming dictatorship. It was established in Miami, where he studied Industrial Engineering, graduating in 1966, and completed a master’s degree in finance in 1968.
As a child Humberto Calzada always had fascination with architecture. He worked as an engineer and was a contractor before devoting himself fully to painting around the mid -70s of the last century.
His works, enigmatic and serene, evoked the memory of the island he left. As an exile painter, his legacy remains in the emotional preservation of architecture and Cuban culture.
He debuted alone as a painter in the Bacardí Art Gallery in Miami in 1975. His strokes reflected in life structures, patios, stained glass and columns; A deeply rooted work in Cuban colonial and neoclassical architecture, recreated from the memory of exile.
Humberto’s house in Miami was a cultural meeting point for exiles, intellectuals and artists. More than decorative, his artistic work worked as a memory bridge, a fragment of the Cuba that lived in The collective imaginary.
His work was portrayed in documentaries, such as “To build another house”that explore their creative process and their vision of exile.
Humberto Calzada had numerous individual and collective exhibitions in the US, Latin America and relevant museums. They highlight 15 years in the Bass Museum in Miami Beach with a retrospective that began in 1991; as well as thirty years with “In Dreams Awake” in the Lowe Art Museum of the University of Miami.
It was also exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the National Museum of Chile, the neighborhood museum in New York, among others.
