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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