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Published: June 27th 2015
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Eliseo Osorio Cordero Art Gallery
Photo by Kathryn MacDonald©
Baracoa’s “cacao- and coconut-growing traditions, her living human treasures,
her legends, traditional dances, and Caribbean cuisine,
the spells cast by jigües, the unique tibaracones,
and the lushness of her mountains with their multitude of greens
and spectrum of warm colors are reflected in the works of artists who cherish
an intimate relationship with the universe that is Baracoa.”
Alejandro Hartmann Matos, Historian of the City of Baracoa, Introduction
Baracoa de Cuba: La Magia de sus Pintores/The Painters’ Magic
A “wannabe” painter, I search through the streets for Eliseo Osorio Cordero Art Gallery, peering into windows along the main street from the harbour to the Catedral la Nuestra de la Señora Asunción and along the shady park that fronts the cathedral. I can see no sign announcing the gallery where prominent painters and sculptors display their work.
I take my search to side streets and those running parallel on either side. No luck. But I do discover the Casa de Cultura where dancers practice a routine and where young artists have draped the walls of a
111 pages of photographs and essays about Baracoa's painters.two-room studio from ceiling to floor with their paintings. Eventually, my wanderings also lead me to Expo Taller CaboVerde (Roel Caboverde’s studio-gallery) and to Galeria-Taller “Atabey” (Mildo Matos’ studio-gallery). On a hot afternoon I take refuge from the sun under the shade of tall trees in the cathedral square. Across the street, the door and shutters of a bright blue building are open, and to my delight, I have stumbled upon Eliseo Osoria Cordero, like Columbus stumbled upon Cuba in November, 1492.
Until the 1960s when the Farola highway opened Baracoa to the rest of Cuba, the area was quite isolated. Perhaps this isolation is in large part responsible for the unique “school” that developed here. As the authors of The Painters’ Magic note, “Baracoa’s artists demonstrate a fluency in the vast modes of expression offered by postmodern art, which has energized the city’s cultural ambiance. They tease the viewer with irony and irreverence, relying on their vital space as a point of reference.” They seek ways to “communicate their perceptions of reality and the influence of their social and cultural roots.”
Baracoa’s artistic complex reaches back to the cave,
Roel Caboverde
Photo by Kathryn MacDonald©
ceremonial, and everyday objects created by the Taíno, the people occupying this corner of Cuba when Columbus first stumbled upon it. Art lovers who visit galleries today find nature in symbolic, primitive, and exaggerated form. Paintings exude a sense of wonder – almost worship – playful, colourful, and magical. For more than 500 years, artists – from indigenous, foreign, and Cuban – have interpreted mythologies, history, landscape, and people in sculpture and paintings, and they have put their individual twist on subjects and techniques.
I become a bit of a “Peeping Tom,” as I gaze into open-shuttered windows. This is how I find Roel Caboverde. He sits at his easel beyond the rod-iron bars that separate us. He looked up and motioned me inside. Warm and friendly with an easy smile, Cabo meets me at the open door and sweeps his arm in an arc that takes in the walls of paintings. Cabo’s world is highly symbolic and celebrates peasant workers, fishermen, and local characters that inhabit his cubist landscapes. Hot colours and a sense of both the erotic and ironic met my gaze. After a chat and an invitation to take photographs of the studio-gallery, I leave with
Mildo Matos
Photo by Kathryn MacDonald©
a copy of The Painter’s Magic in hand.
Another meandering and similar peeping leads me to Mildo Matos Carcasés’ studio, Galeria-Taller “Atabey,” on Calle Marti. Mildo says that one of his greatest influences is the cultural legacy of the Taíno, which he abstracts, not unlike the cubist period of Picasso. What strikes me, however, is how similar his paintings look to those of the Haida people of Canada. Like Cabo’s art, Mildo’s colours are bright, hot, and intense, but that is where similarity ends. His vision, he says, comes through his soul and not from what he sees with his eyes.
In the Casa de Cultura, two young men share a table both intent on the canvases that lay before them. I stand in the doorway scanning paintings tacked to the walls around them. As with Cabo and Mildo, the youth invite me inside. I have found the “incubator” that nurtures emerging artists. Here, painters are searching for their subject, passion, and artistic identity. The future of painting in Baracoa is secure.
On this visit, I have found only two of Baracoa’s renowned artists and two youth who one
A future blog will explore nature, including the endemic and endangered polymitas. Casa de Cultura (Cultural Centre)
Photo by Kathryn MacDonald©
day might share their fame. But Baracoa is home to many more internationally acclaimed painters. I look forward to future visits. I want to look beyond the established artists such as Cabo and Mildo to newer painters who are making reputations, artists such as Yahandra Bernot Guzmán, Alexandro Toirac García, and Yoeldris Reyes Lores who are stretching beyond the goalposts established by their elders.
Next time: I set out to explore the archeology of Baracoa and environs.
Notes:
Baracoan artists have exhibited at home and abroad, individually and collectively: for example, in Baracoa at Eliseo Osorio Cordero Art Gallery (the brilliant blue space opposite the central park) and in more metropolitan and international Havana, and abroad in Spain, France, and Florida, USA.
Jigües: These mischievous river spirits remind me of the North American indigenous trickster, coyote.
Tibaracones: Where sandbars separate rivers from the ocean, from Taíno, the people inhabiting the land when Columbus “discovered” Cuba. (This has become a metaphor for the space that separates dreams from reality for many of the Baracoan painters.)
Baracoa de Cuba: La Magia de sus Pintores/The Painters’ Magic
Next blog…Regino Rodriguez Gainza (with James and me) at Yara-Majayara with archeological finds.
Photo by Alber Hernandez
by Elexis J. Fernández Rubio Navarro and Rosendo Romero Suárez, 2009 (ISBN 9780971667525).
Related blogs:
Baracoa Cuba, a photo essay:
http://traveller-kate.blogspot.ca/2015/06/baracoa-cuba-photo-essay-of-city.html?spref=fb Discovering Baracoa:
http://traveller-kate.blogspot.ca/2014_10_01_archive.html Over the Mountains: Santiago to Baracoa:
http://traveller-kate.blogspot.ca/2014/12/over-mountains-santiago-to-baracoa.html
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