Pedro Pablo Oliva

El Beso, 2011

Bronze sculpture, 182 x 41 x 31 cm.


  • El beso de Pedro Pablo Oliva se trata, sin dudas, de una obra fabulosa, que exige que hagamos a su alrededor un periplo de goce estético, para terminar sucumbiendo, como débiles voyeurs, ante el instante sublime de un beso de amor.
  • This amazing sculpture entitled El beso represents Pedro Pablo Oliva at the height of his career and is one of his most spectacular works.
  • Pedro Pablo Oliva trabaja con preciosismo los detalles del vestuario, de los rostros, del pelo, de las extremidades, creando unas bellas y relucientes texturas, como si el bronce fuera un material blando y maleable como los tejidos, el pelo o la piel misma.
  • Pedro Pablo Oliva trabaja con preciosismo los detalles del vestuario, de los rostros, del pelo, de las extremidades, creando unas bellas y relucientes texturas, como si el bronce fuera un material blando y maleable como los tejidos, el pelo o la piel misma.
  • La especial sensibilidad de Pedro Pablo Oliva le permite captar un fascinante universo cargado de símbolos, producto de su incesante imaginación y con la absoluta singularidad de quien es capaz de construir una formulación plástica de vigorosa fantasía.
  • Pedro Pablo Oliva sigue siendo un creador que causa espasmo en la comunidad crítica, porque el tiempo en su rostro, sus premios y honores, en vez de generar un proceso lógico de reposo y apaciguamiento del espíritu rebelde y hereje, parece por el contrario lubricar una capacidad crítica que con la madurez humana se hace filo cortante que resplandece y se concreta en una praxis artística lúcida y excitante.

Among his finest sculptural work, El beso outstands. This piece made in bronze with a great beauty and conceptual lyricism, and which is highly representative of the aesthetic values that depict most of this artist’s production. He is, undoubtedly, one of the most important exponents of Cuban art after the Revolution.  

This stylish sculpture of 182 cm of height, shows us a beautiful young lady who, wearing a flowery dress, is descending from the sky to kiss her loved one, a little man sitting on a rock with a bunch of flowers in his hand. As it is typical of Oliva, this is a lyric, imaginary, oneiric scene. The beautiful young lady seems to have been born from the imagination of a dismayed being, who is looking to the sky in the solitude of the peak of a rock and begs for the presence of an idyllic love. And, like by a divine plan, the Venus appears, levitates above him and brushed his skin with a kiss. In this point, the sculpture plays with the cubist deformation of the human beings’ anatomic norms. Oliva turns both their necks so that we can see both faces in the consummation of the kiss, one facing the other, just like their bodies, in a visual plane that results improbable, mere formal invention of the artist. Oliva works the details of the costumes preciously, as well as those of the faces, the hair, and the extremities, creating beautiful and shining textures, as if bronze were a soft and malleable material like tissue, hair or skin themselves. It is, undoubtedly, a fabulous work that demands the audience to make by aesthetical joyful wanderings around it to end up surrendering, like weak voyageurs, to the sublime instant of a love kiss.