October 2016 – YAOH AG – Yet Another Old Holding

Ethnic awareness in the Cuban art I (XIX Century to the first half of the XX Century)

– Virginia Alberdi Benítez –

An important area of the Cuban art reveals the ethnic awareness of the inhabitants of the Antillean Island. The encounter between Africa and Europe in the creation of the Nation determines that “condition of the soul” characterized by the Cuba anthropologist Fernando Ortiz as the element essential of the Cuban character.

It is not about just an instrumental category. While in The United States and Brazil the Afro-Americans or Afro-Brazilian identities are profiled, according to the case, in Cuba almost nobody is defined as “Afro-Cuban”, what doesn’t mean that there is no awareness about the importance of the African legacy – from the African enslaved women and men and their descendants – in the construction and development of the Cuban nationality. This comes from historical factors. The struggle for independence of the XIX century were born both from the need of obtaining the political emancipation and the abolition of slavery. The initial revolution, led in the Eastern region by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes on October 10th, 1868, intended to separate Cuba from the colonial Spanish Government and also to make slaves free. The abolition of the pro-slavery regime finally arrived in 1886, not only because of the economic unsustainability of that system before the advance of the productive forces in the industrial sphere, but because of the push of the social movements for the elimination of slavery.

The role of the black and mixed-race individuals was decisive in the second stage of the anticolonial struggles, at the end of the XIX century, and it had an integrative orientation from the popular bases of the insurrection. The Cuban sociologist Fernando Martinez Heredia points to that process when stating that “the black people in Cuba became the black Cubans with the revolution of 1895 and the order of the identity was that from then on until today.” And he adds: “For that reason in Cuba to say Afro-Cuban is a serious mistake if one will refer to the most general, to people’s own existence. There is not such, there is Cuban people” and it was “a conquered right”.

In the sociocultural plane, a long time ago, it was being created what Fernando Ortiz called “cross-acculturation”, it is, the union or mixing of the elements contributed by the diverse ethnic components meeting in Cuba that were configuring an own and new identity by means of multiple and complex interrelations.

In the history of the visual arts, and the reflection on them of the African legacy, that process went along from an external look of folklore and customs, to an interior, original and conscious look. The first of these looks is contained in the engravings and prints of the XIX century that represented scenes of the urban slavery on squares and streets of the main cities.

It was in the first half of the XX century, after having achieved the independence of the colony, when that cross-cultural reality was evident in Cuban art, what coincided with the assimilation of the artistic vanguards by the artists that starting from these ones began to think about an original way of capturing their sense of their indigenous character. Even though the Western Europe origin of the conventional art practices consecrated by the academic exercises was out of discussion, the truly novel thing consisted on keeping in mind that the Cuban condition would not be complete without the marks coming from Africa and this way to agree with the cultural mixing.

Wifredo Lam (1902 – 1982) was who better understood this, surprisingly from his European experience and his exchanges with the surrealist movement, and his reunion with the insular reality of the 40s of the XX century, when he was forced to quit Paris due to the Second World War. In Havana he painted two famous works: “The jungle” and “The chair”. Everything Lam made from that moment on expressed a syncretic conception where the energy and the spiritual environments of the Caribbean cultures unite in an incessant search of the Cuban soul, in which the ethnos reveals his African, European and Chinese tributaries and reaches an integrative dimension. That metaphoric ability is explained by the great Cuban novelist and critic Cuban Alejo Carpentier with the following words written in 1944: “The eyes free of preconceived images or the d’après l’art ways in the Creole way, Lam began to create his atmosphere, by means of figures where what is human, what is animal, what is a vegetable, were mixed without delimitations, creating a world of primitive myths, with something ecumenically Antillean, deeply bundled, not only to the Cuban soil, but to the soil of the whole group of islands. Unaware of the document, his painting with no local anecdote could not have been able to be conceived, however, by any European artist. All what is magic, what is imponderable, what is mysterious in our atmosphere, appears revealed in his recent paintings with an impressive force. There is a certain baroque style in those exuberant compositions, in gravitation around a “central solid axis”.

But Lam was not the only one in assuming the ethnic mixing from the vanguards. Visibly influenced by Gauguin, Victor Manuel Garcia (1897. 1969) painted in 1929 in Paris, “Tropical Gypsy”, and a portrait that summarizes the physical features of the mixed-race character. Many years later Servando Cabrera Moreno (1923. 1981), with his “Havana women”, would deepen that beloved vision that the poet Nicolas Guillen mentioned when pointing out the achievement of the “Cuban color” as a goal…

A work of unavoidable reference in the evolution of the Cuban art is “The kidnapping of the mixed-race women”, by Carlos Enriquez (1900. 1957). It was painted in 1938 and exhibited in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Fine arts of Havana, this painting recycles, starting from a pictorial innovative perspective, “The kidnapping of the Sabines”, by Poussin, locating the anecdote in the rural Cuban context. By using a chromatic gradation that privileges the transparencies, the painter puts in the center a group of mixed-race Cuban women in an action full of sensuality, in which the violence of the passions is foreseen and the Cuban landscape is seen in the distance.

But if it is about artistic singularities it will be necessary to notice the case of Roberto Diago Querol (1920. 1957) that left a significant mark in the second quart of the XX century, in spite of his short life, because he died being only thirty seven years old. Diago’s art is explained by a triple condition: the black pigmentation of his skin, his belonging to a family and social nucleus of remarkable importance in the popular Cuban culture, mainly in music, and his breaking out with the aesthetic academic codes in those he was trained. The spiritual traditions of the slaves’ descendants and the interpretation of Antillean legends are shown in his painting. “The Oracle” (1949) is one of the first pictorial testimonies of the ritual practices of the abakuá secret society, that originated in the imaginary brought to Cuba by the slaves coming from the territory of Dahomey (at the present Benin). Not only in painting, but also in sculpture the aware expression of the Cuban ethnos should be tracked in that stage, in a particular way in two creators that, like Diago, were black, but whose aesthetic ideals were projected toward the inquiry of the Cuban character in the fullest sense in the concept.

Teodoro Ramos Blanco (1902. 1972) sculpted black and mixed-race figures throughout an artistic trajectory that evolved from the academic realism to the modernist stylization, under the guardian shade of Rodin. It is interesting, apart from the inappropriate and euphemistic terminology to refer to the pigmentation of the skin, what the historian of art Luis de Soto said about Ramos Blanco: “Except in what refers to the election of subjects, I don’t think that the ethnic factor is an appreciable element in the Ramos Blanco’s production. We have been able to observe that his works inspired by topics of the black race surpass the mark of what is individual, what is about customs, what is picturesque and what is folkloric and social, mainly revealing the artist’s concern whose realism doesn’t stick to what is adjectival or accidental of the individual, but to the generalization of what is typical, what is substantive in the expressive content of the sculpture.”

Internationally recognized as one of the masters of the sculpture in last century, Agustin Cardenas (1927. 2001), although he developed his career in Europe, came from Cuba, where in the 50s he contributed with his talent to the irruption of the abstractionism. But as the poet and essayist Nancy Morejón remembers, the topic of identity was not ignored by Cárdenas, but “that ancestral feeling that makes him a rich relative of the anonymous tradition of a multiple Africa” is channeled in the subtle plots of the European modernity.

For the historian of the art Yolanda Wood the Cuban identity profile should not be seen only in the limits of what some people call “raciality”. That is why she draws our attention to another way to reflect ethnos: the vision of the popular culture. As examples of that, she invites to admire two works by Eduardo Abela (1891. 1965): “The comparsa” and “The rumba”. About the last one she writes: “It is revealing a presence not already of the black people, but of what is black in Cuba, as an essential component of the culture.”

From the second half of the XX century to our days that “essential component” has been multiplied in the Cuban visuality to such a point that it deserves another comment that we promise to Artemorfosis’ friends in a future article.

Eduardo Roca «Choco»

– Virginia Alberdi Benítez –

– Art Critic –

Choco, the renowned Cuban artist, shines with his own light. Perhaps not all inhabitants of the Caribbean island know that his name is Eduardo Roca Salazar, but when you say Choco – the familiar name with which he signs his pieces – Cubans understand that you are speaking of a well-known artist. It is not necessary to be familiar with his work in detail or to frequently visit the spaces where he exhibits; in the public domain, beyond the specialized circles, Choco is someone whom everyone admires for contributing to the heart of Cuban culture.

That perception has been forged over time and is supported by the regularity of a consistent artistic output, duly accompanied by reviews and the media. The most influential Cuban critics followed the creator’s work attentively since the beginning of his career. The national television has dedicated programs to him, and a promotional video from a series on some thirty artists from the island has had a significant tenure for years in prime time.

In recent years, two documentaries on his life and artistic career have had notable impact: Choco (2014), by U.S. professor and filmmaker Juanamaría Cordones Cook, and El hombre de la sonrisa amplia y la mirada triste (The Man with the Wide Smile and Sad Glance) (2016), by Cuban filmmaker Pablo Massip.

But the most decisive recognition comes from the forms of interaction that reinforce group appreciation and statements of opinion, originating from Choco’s active participation in Cuban cultural life: not only in activities related with visual arts, but also in other areas of creativity and social events.

It is no coincidence that prestigious writers and intellectuals from various disciplines have issued appraisals of his work and published impressions that endorse a legacy they consider essential for the spiritual heritage of their fellow countrymen.

His participation in salons and biennials, the awards he has received, his mural paintings, the collaboration with dance companies, and the use of his images in shows have contributed to the notoriety of his work and granted visibility to his artistic mark.

To this must be added his early and subsequently growing recognition in international circles. Gallery owners and art collectors were captivated by the artist as he became known in Latin America, Europe, the United States, and Japan.

As if that were not enough, his work and life coherently complement the artist’s personality. The human being and creator merge in a sole entity. This was perceived in the early days by the great poet Eliseo Diego, who in 1976 wrote, “Eduardo Roca has stopped promising and is already a painter from head to toe. But although his feet are well placed on the ground – in his country – and the head is clear and held on high, it is from the heart that his painting emerges.” And it was confirmed in 1999 by novelist, essayist and politician Abel Prieto: “Choco, unlike others, turns a youthful fifty, without bitterness, with his smile intact, delivering his friendship and his work with the generosity of men; of true artists.”

To decode Choco and understand why he is a prophet in his land and in many other places, one must search into his roots, his aesthetic ideas, and the context of his evolution.

One cannot explain the artist without the social and cultural transformations that took place in Cuba after the change of regime in 1959. The opportunities for personal fulfillment for a Cuban of humble origin born in 1949 were limited. His first years were spent in Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second most important city, located in the eastern region.

As a child he would draw in the school notebooks. A teacher became aware of his skill and encouraged him to answer a call to train the first art instructors. A school had been opened in Havana that rapidly prepared young people from all over the island with the mission of teaching fine arts, dance, music and theater in cities and countryside, schools and factories, military units and fishing villages. That educational effort in 1961 coincided with the massive literacy campaign that taught tens of thousands to read and write in scarcely eleven months.

After two years Choco graduated as an art instructor in visual arts. He recalls his arrival in Havana with a wooden suitcase and the entrance to the school, located in a luxury hotel in the neighborhood that until a short time earlier had been inhabited by the national bourgeoisie. He was the youngest student, and because of the color of his skin his classmates began to call him “Chocolate”, which was gradually shortened to “Choco”.

Since he was only fourteen years old when he graduated in 1963 he was not legally allowed to work, so he was able to continue his studies at the recently opened National School of Art (ENA), in Cubanacán.

The ENA teaching staff in Choco’s day (he graduated there in 1970) included distinguished representatives of the Island’s artistic vanguard. One of these professors was Antonia Eiriz, who exerted great influence upon the first graduates to whom she transmitted the secrets of the craft and the encouragement to develop their own personalities. Another important artist who taught him was Servando Cabrera Moreno, of whom Choco has said, “Without Servando, neither I nor many of my contemporaries would have arrived at the conceptions on art we have today. Servando greatly widened our expectations as painters.” And although painting was in the center of the training, Choco had already come in contact with printing techniques. This, as we shall see later, was providential for the future development of his career.

From Havana he briefly returned to Santiago de Cuba where he worked as a teacher. He moved back to the Cuban capital in 1973, where he settled and dedicated himself to teaching, first in the San Alejandro Academy, and later at the ENA. In the mid-seventies he began to visit the Experimental Graphics Workshop at the Plaza de la Catedral of Havana, where he developed as an engraver until becoming one of the undisputed masters of the specialty.

The painter from the 1970s became well known for his canvases of popular epic themes shared at the time with several of his contemporaries: anonymous heroes of the sugarcane harvest, peasants tied to their land, landscapes transformed by human sensibility.

Regarding those avatars, two events should be taken into consideration. First, his stay in Angola in 1978 as collaborator of the Cuban Civil Mission in the field of culture, which enabled him to obtain direct knowledge of a reality interconnected to his ethnic origins. In addition, there was the beginning of his international career, particularly his emergence in the United States in 1981, when he shared an exhibition with the painter Nelson Domínguez in San Francisco. This is not fortuitous: Choco is one of most popular contemporary Cuban artists in the United States, even before earning the Grand Prize at the Fourth International Print Triennial of Kochi, Japan in 1999, which undoubtedly increased the value of his work.

Since the 1980s Choco evolved stylistically toward the definitive symbols that characterize his images. In general, a reference to take into consideration was the inevitable influence the New Figuration aesthetics exerted not only on him, but also on the early promotions of artists trained at the ENA.

It is worth mentioning that it was not the assimilation of the European criterion of this trend, which included Irishman Francis Bacon, Frenchman Jean Dubuffet, and Spaniard Antonio Saura, but the proximity to the Latin American trend, led by Venezuelan Jacobo Borges, Mexican José Luis Cuevas, and Argentinean Antonio Berni, among others. The latter, by the way, was promoted in Cuba by Casa de las Américas. In his expressionistic version, the neo-figuratism in the Island reached one of its peaks precisely in the work of Antonia Eiriz.

If our artist shows a connection with certain principles of the New Figuration to some extent and in a tangential manner, that is because when observing his paintings and prints one notices the importance of the recovery of the iconic representation and the relation between the human figure and the construction of the painting space itself.

Unlike the generation of artists who emerged in the 1980s, however, neither Choco nor his generational companions dedicated, even remotely, energy to theoretical discussions. They painted, drew, and printed according to their own expressive needs. And if initially they seemed to respond to a spirit of the times, they went on to choose their paths individually resulting from experiences and personal possibilities. In Choco’s case, these experiences nourished his creative impulses and extracted an essential connection that is present in all his work, which the artist has established with the Cuban nationality.

Choco thinks visually what the island’s major poet, Nicolás Guillén, called Cuban color. Neither African nor European, neither black nor white; the artist reflects the result of a new identity, qualitatively different from the ones supplied by the sources. As Guillén stated in 1931, “To begin with, the spirit of Cuba is racially mixed…” and considered that “From the spirit to the skin will come the definitive color; some day it will be called Cuban color.” From the late twentieth century into the present one Choco has faithfully and masterly interpreted the transition from that anticipation to a latent reality.

That is evident both in the physical features of his human figures and in the skin textures and atmosphere of each composition. To verify this, examine the repertoire of images displayed in ArteMorfosis gallery. The pieces exhibited there have been recreated in impeccable prints, his well-known collagraphs that are true masterpieces. People crowned by birds, fruits, and hats; faces of mineral consistency that glow with earthly colors; women distributed in space; a dancer of irradiating gesture; a Venus that is saved from original sin; each and every one of them on backgrounds of abundant textures. His painting, with figurations related to the ones in his prints show his mastery of this art form. The polychrome sculptures burrow into the wood for the mystery of plant fibers.

From a technical point of view, the viewer of the exhibited works could ignore the difference between painting and engraving, since what matters and impacts is the visual outcome. The artist actually assumes both lines of accomplishment without stopping in watertight compartments. The porous nature of the borders between one and the other form is due to the character and dominion of the collagraphic technique and internalization of the latter’s effects on the painting procedures.

Choco is conscious of that crossing. He admitted to Cuban journalist Estrella Díaz in an interview, “I learned about collagraphy, and when I started working with it I saw that I was actually painting, because the technique fitted perfectly with my way of painting. Collagraphy, because of its possible textures, reliefs, and technique of execution, was a very interesting and very contemporary painting form. Therefore, I did not feel I was printing – I felt I was painting.”

Painting, engraving, sculpture: Choco is one and indivisible. He summarizes ancestral wisdom and unyielding vitality. The Yorubas, one of the ethnic groups that contributed to the formation of the Cuban nationality, have a saying: “I am because you are.” That is the key – alpha and omega, beginning and end – of his work.

Havana, September 2016

Virginia Alberdi Benítez (Havana, 1947) Graduate from the Higher Pedagogic Institute Enrique José Varona, 1970. Art critic, editor-in-chief of Artecubano ediciones. During more than twenty years she was a Specialist in Promotion at the National Council for Plastic Arts (CNAP). During five years she was a senior specialist at the gallery Pequeño Espacio, at CNAP. She has curated numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her texts appear as collaborations in La Jiribilla, Granma newspaper, the tabloid Noticias de Arte Cubano, the magazines Artecubano, On Cuba, Acuarela. She has written texts for catalogues of different artists.

Eduardo Roca «Choco»: EQUILIBRIO HUMANO

Keys to an Identity

– Virginia Alberdi –

Choco shines with his own light. Perhaps not all inhabitants of the Caribbean island know that his name is Eduardo Roca, but when you say Choco – the familiar name with which he signs his pieces – they understand that you are speaking of an artist whom everyone admires for contributing to the heart of Cuban culture. That perception has been forged over time and is supported by the regularity of a consistent artistic output.

Eduardo Roca «Choco» (Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, *1949)

The participation in salons and biennials and the awards he has received have contributed to the notoriety of his work and granted visibility to his artistic mark. To this must be added his early and subsequently growing recognition in international circles. Gallery owners and art collectors were captivated by the artist as he became known in Latin America, Europe, the United States, and Japan. In his case, these experiences nourished his creative impulses and extracted an essential connection that is present in all his work, which the artist has established with the Cuban nationality.

He is familiar with the printing technique – particularly collagraphy – and masters it like few others,. Neo-expressionist elements appear in his creation, where the most intense Cubanness is always present. That is evident both in the physical features of his human figures and in the skin textures and atmosphere of each composition. To verify this, examine the repertoire of images displayed in ArteMorfosis gallery. People crowned by birds, fruits, and hats; faces of mineral consistency that glow with earthly colors; women distributed in space; a dancer of irradiating gesture; a Venus that is saved from original sin; each and every one of them on backgrounds of abundant textures. His painting, with figurations related to the ones in his prints show his mastery of this art form. The polychrome sculptures burrow into the wood for the mystery of plant fibers.

Fat Coloured Lips – 2015 – Collagraphy on Paper – 107 x 89 cm

Havana, September 2016

Virginia Alberdi Benítez (Havana, 1947) Graduate from the Higher Pedagogic Institute Enrique José Varona, 1970. Art critic, editor-in-chief of Artecubano ediciones. During more than twenty years she was a Specialist in Promotion at the National Council for Plastic Arts (CNAP). During five years she was a senior specialist at the gallery Pequeño Espacio, at CNAP. She has curated numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her texts appear as collaborations in La Jiribilla, Granma newspaper, the tabloid Noticias de Arte Cubano, the magazines Artecubano, On Cuba, Acuarela. She has written texts for catalogues of different artists.

Eduardo Roca «Choco» – EQUILIBRIO HUMANO

Choco – EQUILIBRIO HUMANO – November 4 through December 3, 2016

As the title ‘EQUILIBRIO HUMANO’ suggests, the works of the Afro-Cuban Artist Eduardo Roca «Choco» (*1949, Santiago de Cuba) are characterised by their search for equilibrium of man with himself, nature, his spirituality, his ancestry independent of ethnicity. His work – whether painting, sculpture or print – is characterised by it corporeality which is formed by the motives as well as materiality.

ArteMorfosis is the first Swiss gallery to display oil paintings, collagraphies and wood sculptures in Switzerland of the international renowned artist.

Master of collagraphy like no other in Cuba, his solid pasting and sensual volumes identify him among his contemporaries as the most advanced among the figurative expressionists with a vocation for abstraction.
Choco is like his painting: delicate and at the same time expansive, penetrated by chiaroscuro and seductive by nature. His seduction compels us to savor his paintings with pleasure, to submerge into the rubber and the cellulose, to find support on the wood and linoleum, on the metal and vinyl. He takes us by the hand to a world where the aroma of tropical fruits, the arms and legs of bodies that mix in their ethnicity are captivating, to affirm the identity values of the island, to help us understand a cosmos he has created with his roots and his blood.
Nobody pretends to decipher the mystery of his painting; it remains submerged in the artist’s heart. But indeed, in his art lies the essence of Cubanness, that forgotten essence; and what was forgotten he rescues with the tools of his talent and sensibility, and to which he grants universal rank.
Choco knows that only art accompanies us on the adventure of transgression and metamorphosis. His work contributes to a better understanding among us as human beings, because in it we discover another road to the kingdom of fantasy we all hope to reach, and where art always leads us; this time by the hand of the great Choco.

Miguel Barnet
Words at the exhibition Abanico de posibilidades (Range of Possibilities), 2004, National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana