The National Museum of Contemporary Ceramics of Cuba inaugurated this Friday the exhibition “Sosabravo Espacio de Color”, on the eve of the 95th birthday of the tireless master of the visual arts, at the Hispano-American Cultural Center, located in Old Havana.
“This personal exhibition of Alfredo Sosabravo was organized in an attempt to show the freshness of his work in the most recent decades of the 21st century,” he told the agency. Latin Press the director of the museum and curator of the exhibition, Surisday Reyes.
The exhibition brings together eight watercolors from the “Havana Suite” series, six enamelled lava stone discs and twenty plates that make up “Sosabravo color space”; works that came out of the artist’s flowing imagination during the period 2000-2019.
According to Reyes, these are fairly recent pieces in time when considering the age of the creator. “They demonstrate their permanent need to explore and work on other formats and supports,” added Reyes.
Agile, effusive and good-natured, as always, the author presented himself at the inauguration, which was attended by his representative, the creator René Palenzuela, the National Prize for Plastic Arts Zaida del Río, the director of events of the Ministry of Culture, Lis Cuesta, the first vice president and the vice president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, Magda Resik and Yuris Nórido, respectively.
The Hispanic American Culture Center, located on Malecón No. 17, between Prado and Capdevila, will host the exhibition for a month.
Latin Press He noted that the choice of place is not coincidental, given that a couple of decades ago the ceramics museum inaugurated the exhibition “Sosabravo, owner of the space” there, in homage to the then 75th anniversary of the birth of the master of the visual arts.
Another expo, but with graphics
A few days ago, on October 11, “Sosabravo. Selection of graphic work” was inaugurated in the exhibition hall of the headquarters of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba in Santa Clara, as part of the tribute for the 95th anniversary of the Master, who, with equal talent, has ventured as a painter, draftsman, engraver and ceramist.
The exhibition contains 30 pieces, including woodcuts and lithographs from the La Estampa cabinet and is part of the Itinerancias program, which contributes to strengthening cultural ties between territories by disseminating the work of representative artists of the country.
It is a set of works where you can appreciate Sosabravo’s style from sober compositions to contrasts more defined by chromatic intensity.
The pieces reflect a look at the Cuban popular imagination and propose a reading of pop art reinterpreted from symbols, customs and values of national identity, in an exercise of fusion of tradition and modernity, indicated an office from the Cuban News Agency (ACN).
A child engraving prodigy
Alfredo Sosabravo was born in Sagua la Grande, Villa Clara, on October 25, 1930, and has received, among many awards and recognitions, the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1997, the Felix Varela Order and the Honoris Causa Doctorate from the Higher Institute of Art, being considered one of the most important Cuban artists of visual arts and design.
He has received international awards such as the Gold Medal at the XXXIV International Competition for Contemporary Art Ceramics in Faenza in 1976 and the Italian Order of Merit in 2007 for his works in Murano.
“In 1950 I started as a self-taught painter with few conditions to create my work. In 1956 I was able to enter San Alejandro and took some techniques and disciplines that I needed. From then on my career as a young artist began,” he recalled in 2022 in a interview with the portal The Jiribilla.
“After 1959, Acosta León had told me that we should send a work to an engraving competition at the National Museum, related to themes of the Revolution. I knew how to paint and had a certain reference to engraving, but I had never made one. He gave me the ideas to make a woodcut… I submitted the work and received a prize. I was like the child prodigy of engraving, because mine was different from the rest. It seemed that I had learned from the impressionists Germans, which I didn’t even know at the time.”
“Later, I ventured into ceramics. The manifestations came to me accidentally, and I take advantage of them. One comes from the other, they are not isolated. For example, it came from painting and drawing, which was useful for engraving. When I started in ceramics, I had a lot of engraving, after sculpture. Something similar has happened with bronze and glass. I am proud that the different manifestations have come to me,” he declared ago. three years.
Several of his works are permanently exhibited in the National Museum of Fine Arts, Cuba, such as Prostitute combing her hair, Stuck cosmonaut and Character in front of the sunall from 1967.
