A Painter’s Imprint in Holguin, Cuba

“The findings of a Watchman” is the name of a personal show exhibited by young painter Julio Cesar Rodriguez in the La Periquera Provincial Museum at Holguin city.

The collection was previously exhibited in January at the Colonial Art Museum in Havana City. This is not the first time that his work is seen in the capital. The Convent of Saint Francis of Asisis, the Grand Theater of Havana, and other sites have held his paintings there.

The Shared Root, The Flight of the Sprouted Palm Trees, The Virgin of the Stone and The Hidden Nutshell are evidence of the artist's doings so far in the beginnings of this 2007. “The findings of a Watchman” comprises mostly canvas, although there is mixed technique in some pieces.

Wooden bodies, Cuban palm trees, birds, eyes, and hands; make a symbolic speech of his art, where he is repeatedly portrayed in various contexts.

The 16 arts pieces conforming this exhibition “are not only touching due to the technique of the convincing drawing”, but also due to “the poetic, gullible language, also accompanied by new longings or blue dreams”, as stated by poet Jose Luis Moreno in the show catalogue.

This year Rodriguez has been awarded the City Prize for “The blue lady”, also part of the exposition. He was also granted the “Venga la Esperanza” (May Hope Come to us) Prize, by the Hermanos Saiz Young Artists´ Association in Holguin, in 2003; and the second Prize in the 460th Anniversary Hall, in 2005, among other awards.

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Paintbrushes, Nature and Poetry: Nelida Lopez in Holguin

With the Where I was born exposition, by plastic artist Nelida Lopez, we attend these days at Holguin Art Centre to “the meeting point where nature and poetry make us live what doesn't exist yet” as poet Gilberto Gonzalez Seik described it in his opening words.

Nelida graduated from the Juan J. Fornet Pina Plastic Arts School in Holguin in 1966 and from the Havana National Art School in 1968. She returns to Holguín with this collection that includes pieces of her “From Madrid” and “Seasons” series, where the artist evokes nature from her ever-present own approach.

Regarding this, she said: “I was born in the countryside; I come from a very humble family. Living in the city has made the topic of nature spring in my work. This is about the having been uprooted from my natural environment, the nostalgia for the place of where I come from. It is a way to regret living on the pavement, with washing lines and TV antennas, instead of trees”.

Lopez has held shows in the Acacia Art Gallery, the Wilfredo Lam Centre, the Cuban Photographic Library, and the Havana Belle Arts Museum. Among her best known international exhibitions we can find A Cuban drawing, in Estocolmo, Sweden; A Cuban painting, in Seville, Spain; and Hidden Art of the Revolution, in Toronto, Canada.

Also a member of the Cuban Society of Artists and Writers (UNEAC, in Spanish); the painter remembers that painting has always accompanied her. There was not a moment of hesitation about that in her life. Works like Water in the Stream, I am Bound to the Floor, and To survive Winter explain that other “sight” the poet speaks of.

In her current personal exposition she continues to go for canvas to support her emotions. "In my work, amidst the topic of nature you can see plunder, devastation. It is very symbolic, I use a lot of stumps, but I also use cut branches getting together again, because there is indeed a message of hope"

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