The Cuban Art Building of the National Museum of Fine Arts participated in the last Havana Biennial with a series of exhibits. They are still open to the public and will continue to be the rest of the summer break.
In the museum hall, besides the usual great permanent exposition, you will find three exhibits of renowned Cuban contemporary artists of different generations and aesthetic trends. In the temporary hall on the 3rd floor, the virtuosity of Tomás Sánchez’s landscapes is dazzling to behold. On the 2nd floor, a retrospective of Gustavo Pérez Monzón’s work, entitled Tramas, is held in the permanent exposition devoted to modern Cuban art. Finally, in the temporary hall, located as well on the 2nd floor, Alexandre Arrechea’s El mapa del silencio solo exhibit is also showed. At present, Arrechea is one of the Cuban artists of greatest mobility and international renown.
Today we will focus our attention on Paisajes, Tomás Sanchéz’s solo exhibit, whose curatorship was in charge of the experienced specialist Hortensia Montero. The painting of this virtuous artist is always an oasis to the sight, and in the Biennial context, it was even more. Among all empty, pretentious, improvised pseudo-conceptualisms, a sturdy painting created by this acclaimed Cuban creator is always highly appreciated.
Apart from Tomás Sánchez’s works of art exhibited permanently in the museum halls, the public of the Island hadn’t enjoyed for long time a grand exhibit of Tomás’s spectacular rural landscapes. Such genre has established him as one of the greatest artists in the Cuban contemporary plastic arts scenes and as one of the living Cuban artists of greatest international renown.
When entering the museum hall, my heart rates slowed down, my body temperature began to be pleasant, and my sight was magnetized in one second by those color windows that open themselves like an invitation to a therapy of aesthetic delight. Once sedated and forgotten any previous inconvenience, we are ready to begin a coming and going intellectual meditation. The purely pictorial seduction is just the first stage. Before a painting like this, it is always legitimate to pause and think about the technical expertise, richness, and singularity of details; the surprising verisimilitude of landscapes; the exuberant imagination the artist is able to capture in visual reality.
But we also have to know when to lift our eyes off, and keep our distance. We have to observe the collection and its effect of entirety. Only in that way is it possible to perceive how such complex compositions, where each detail is worked to almost perfection, also become conceptual syntheses and condensation of ideas.
Tomás Sánchez invites us to enter into the spotless and misty nature, or into such piles of human waste also defined as garbage dumps, thus a reflection of the relationship between man and environment can emerge from the most hypnotic aesthetic pleasure.
–Dr. Hamlet Fernández