
UNDER THE CHARM OF THE PALM TREE
We are dedicated to sharing our collection with the public through exhibitions and loans. Sometime in the future, we aspire to create a permanent exhibition platform, such as a museum or cultural center. It would be our dream to share, in a public setting, our passion about Cuba, its complexity, rich culture and history, as documented through the eyes of sensational Cuban artists.

HYBRID OF A CHRYSLER: A PROVOCATION TO FLY
In his works, Esterio Segura blends the socio-political, historical, economic and religious factors that deepen the complexity of everyday life in Cuba, while also exploring the physical and metaphorical boundaries of the island and of human existence itself, both biological and psychological. In this sense, a recurring image in his oeuvre is the “crossbreeding” of winged or finned animals, the human body and other organic elements, with man-made structures, artifacts and devices like bridges, funnels, mills, chimneys, and most specially, cars, airplanes, submarines, bicycles and other machinery conceived as means of transportation and discovery.

ARBUS MAGAZINE
The Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida will explore the contributions of Pedro Pablo Oliva, one of Cuba’s most renowned living artists, in a new exhibition, The Art of Pedro Pablo Oliva, opening March 2. This exhibition of five works on loan from two private Florida collections honors Oliva who is known for his fantastical and provocative paintings, drawings and sculptures that reflect Cuba’s social, cultural and political life.

GAINESVILLE DOWNTOWN
New Exhibit at the Cade Museum Salutes Best of Cuban Ingenuity
History has forced Cubans to become the masters of invention. Their dilemma began in the early 1960s when the U.S. imposed a trade embargo on Cuba and soon after severed all diplomatic ties with its island neighbor. Then, in 1991, the collapse of the Soviet Union slashed Cuban imports by 80 percent, creating an even greater scarcity of everyday goods and products.

TAMPA BAY
By Maggie Duffy
BEAUTIFUL AND EERIE: HISTORIES
A must-see exhibition of the work of a prolific contemporary Cuban artist is on display at the University of Tampa’s Scarfone/Hartley Gallery. “Pedro Pablo Oliva’s Cuba: Histories” features paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by this visionary artist from the 1970s through today.

THREE STORKS
I was humbled to be able to take part in the unveiling of an incredible statue honoring my father at the Florida Aquarium this week in Tampa. The Aquarium commissioned artist Yeins Gomez for the project and the result took my breath away... a beautiful metal bow-tie wearing Stork standing above his three little Storks calling to mind his three grandchildren. Mr. Gomez was able to capture so much of my father’s spirit and our Stork proudly stands outside near the Children’s play area of the Aquarium.

QUITO CULTURA
Inmersiones Estratégicas: Primera Escala presenta obras nuevas de artistas que representan a siete países de América Latina y se divide en tres categorías: Artista Consagrado, el artista argentino Horacio Zabala; Artistas de Media Carrera—Magdalena Atria (Chile) y Lázaro Saavedra (Cuba); y Artistas Emergentes—Fredman Barahona (Nicaragua), Gala Berger (Argentina), Víctor del Moral (México), Rubén D´Hers (Venezuela), Laura Huertas Millán (Colombia) y Daniela Serna Gallego (Colombia).

LA HORA DE QUITO
Sobre la propuesta, Ella Fontanals-Cisneros, fundadora de CIFO, señala: “Estamos muy contentos de poder colaborar con el MET-Quito en la presentación de ‘Inmersiones Estratégicas: Primera Escala’, y esperamos que esta iniciativa nos permita desarrollar fuertes vínculos con la comunidad artística de Quito y expandirlos aún más allá”.

WASHINGTON POST
The Artes de Cuba festival couldn’t possibly do justice to the creative life of contemporary Cuba without including the work of visual artists. (...) Likely to be a crowd favorite: Esterio Segura’s “Hybrid of a Chrysler,” a composite work made by adding metal wings to a 1953 car. It recalls not just one of the island’s most popular tourist images — the oversize American cars from the middle of the last century still used as taxis — but also its isolation, both self-imposed and imposed upon it. The work was seen at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and will be on view on the River Terrace. —

PRWEB
The artist himself calls this work “a provocation to fly, an invitation [for Cubans] to the magic of moving beyond the limit of the waters of the island, to realize their own dreams in a symbol of success— the American limousine as an object of worship and idolatry, a sex symbol, a symbol of power.”

SEATTLE PI
“Hybrid of Chrysler,” a 2016 sculpture by Cuban artist Esterio Segura, is now on view at the prestigious 57th Venice Biennale art fair. It is among the work of fifteen Cuban artists included in the fair’s Cuba Pavilion, at the Palazzo Loredan, Campo Santo Stefano, San Marco. Comprising sculpted airplane wings and a genuine 1953 Chrysler limousine, the sculpture was shipped by sea —in parts, from both Havana and Tampa— to the Biennale with the sponsorship of the Tampa-based Cuban Arts Group and the logistics management of Art Engineering.

UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE
Born in Santiago de Cuba in 1970, and known for works that combine poetry with imaginative power, Esterio Segura has shown in the U.S., Europe, and South America, in addition to Cuba. "Hybrid of Chrysler" has been described as expressing “the beauty of the resistance” and “excessive creativity,” making imaginative use of the minimal resources available on an Island whose streets are traveled by almendrones—the vintage American automobiles that serve as taxis.

MARTINEZ LAW TAMPA
Its Oye Como Va exhibit showcases paintings, sculptures, prints and animations from Cuban artists.”It’s just so topical with the renewed relations with Cuba and hopefully our continued renewed relationship,” curator Catherine Bergmann said. “It’s an opportunity to reunite with our neighbors to the south.”The exhibit is more than a year in the making. A group from the arts center, including Bergmann, traveled to Cuba in November 2015 with the idea of one day having a Cuban art exhibit.

CUBAN ART NEWS
Exhibition Walk-Through: Wild Noise/Ruido Salvaje at the Bronx Museum
Last Friday, Wild Noise/Ruido Salvaje opened at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Originally planned as the second half of an exhibition exchange with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, the show ran into a series of setbacks.
Among the obstacles was a concern on the part of the Cubans that state-owned art sent to the United States would be subject to seizure, in response to legal claims by Cubans in the US whose property in Cuba had been taken after the Revolution.

THE SEEN JOURNAL
Yoan Capote is quoted in the wall text by his painting as saying, “The sea, for me and for a lot of Cubans, was like a wall, more an image of isolation than a beautiful place. I grew up with a frustration about the limitation and an obsession about crossing the sea.” This idea situates the title of this survey of contemporary Cuban art, Complicated Beauty, currently on view at the Tampa Museum of Art, organized in collaboration with the Bronx Museum of the Arts—the sea, a paradigm of beauty, is complicated when it becomes a barrier or an obstacle.

TAMPA BAY TIMES

TAMPA BAY TIMES
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