Servando Cabrera Moreno. The Embrace of the Senses

SERVANDO CABRERA MORENO

The Embrace of the Senses Ro s em a r y Ro drígue z C r uz / C l aud ia Go nz á l e z Ma c h ad o

EDICIONES POLYMITA

Rosemary Rodríguez Cruz (Havana, 1984). Since her graduation with a B. A. in History of Art from the University of Havana (2007), she has worked as a museum specialist at the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library, where she is currently deputy director.

She has done graduate studies, received fellowships, and completed two diplomas in her field: “A management model” (2012), and “The Board of Classification, Evaluation, and Exportation of Historical Heritage” (2010), sponsored by the Promotion of the Fine Arts department, and the Protection of Historical Heritage office, both under the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

She curated the exhibitions Epiphany of the Body (2013), Servando’s erotic drawings; The Conscience of the Witness (2009), expressionist works by Servando Cabrera, Antonia Eiriz, and Tomás Sánchez; co-curator of All the Memories of Seville (2008), composed of paintings by Servando that he had dedicated to the Andalusian city; and exhibits of several of Servando’s collections, as well as of Cuban and foreign artists. She has given numerous interviews for radio and television programs, authored several articles on the Museum’s website, and has lectured on the life and work of Servando Cabrera Moreno.

Servando Cabrera Moreno

The Embrace of the Senses

Servando Cabrera Moreno

The Embrace of the Senses

Rosemary Rodríguez Cruz / Claudia G onzález Machado

Photography

Ju lio A . L arr am en d i

EDICIONES POLYMITA GUATEMALA CITY, 2013

PREVIOUS PAGE

El abrazo de los sentidos (The Embrace of the Senses), 1981 Oil on canvas, 185 x 84.5 cm MBSCM collection COVER

Toda la pintura (All the Painting – detail), 1974

E D I TO R I A L D I R E C TO R

Julio A. Larramendi P ROJ EC T C O O R D I NAT I O N

Lourdes Álvarez E D I TO R

Silvana Garriga DESIGN

S E L EC T I O N O F S E RVA N D O C A B R E R A’ S P I C TO R I A L WO R KS

Rosemary Rodríguez, with the cooperation of Claudia González and Patricia Sera C ATA LO G U I N G

Rosemary Rodríguez S E L EC T I O N A N D C ATA LO G U I N G O F FO L K A R T P I EC E S

Pepe Nieto

Patricia Sera

P H OTO G R A P H Y

D O C U M E N T S E LEC T I O N

Julio A. Larramendi, Photographic Archive of the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library and Photographic Archive of the Cuban Ministry of Culture

Claudia González, with the cooperation of Patricia Sera, Lorayne Valdés, and Neida Peñalver

E N G LI S H T R A N S L AT I O N

C O N S E RVAT I O N A N D R E S TO R AT I O N

María Teresa Ortega C O N SU LTA N T S TO T H E E N G L I S H E D I T I O N

Soledad Pagliuca Kathleen Hennesey

AND RESEARCH

O F C H O S E N WO R KS A N D D O C U M E N T S

Alexander Fernández (Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library) and Anniubis García, Mireya Paneque, Deynis Ordaz, Araxes Carmona and Roberto Díaz (National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana) M OV E M E N T O F T H E WO R KS F R O M T H E S E RVA N D O C A B R E R A M O R E N O M US E U M A N D L I B R A RY, A N D P R I VAT E C O LLEC T I O N S

© All rights reserved © English translation: María Teresa Ortega, 2013 © On the present edition: Ediciones Polymita, 2013

Patricia Sera and Alexander Fernández, with the collaboration of Rosemary Rodríguez, Claudia González, Lorayne Valdés, Neida Peñalver, Raúl Vichot and Juan Moreno

ISBN

978-9929-8078-7-7 Ediciones Polymita S. A. Guatemala City, Guatemala edpolymita@gmail.com P RO D U C E D BY

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form and by any means, electronically or mechanically, without the prior permission in writing by the publisher

© Enrique de la Uz

Súcar Caribe S. L., Madrid, Spain

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Our thanks to To SIKEREI Corp., for believing in this project Alejandro Montesinos, for not giving up his dreams of a book like this one Alfredo Guevara, a protagonist in the safeguard of Servando’s collections José Villa, for his unconditional support José Veigas, for having almost all the answers Nancy Rodríguez, Margarita Ruiz, Marta Jiménez, Evidio Perdomo, Natalia Bolívar, Guillermo Jiménez, Daniel Vías, Salvador Fernández, Gerardo Mosquera, Orlando Yanes, Enrique Capablanca, Tomás Sánchez, Cándida Alonso, María Teresa Iglesias, Marta Arjona(†), Gladys Collazo, Liana Río, Lesbia Vent Dumois, Ramón Vázquez, Begoña López family, Nivaldo Carbonell, Alfredo Sosabravo, René Palenzuela, Claudio Ferioli, José A. Choy, Alicia Alfonso, Ángel Bello, Amado Blanco family, García Espinosa family, Jean Marc Ville and Gretchen Lima, Juan Carlos Freijoso, Fidel Fernández National Council of Cultural Heritage, National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana, Museum of the City of Havana, Photographic Archives of the Ministry of Culture, the Cuban Institute of Film Art and Industry, Dance Museum, National Music Museum, Cuban Council of State, SUBASTAHABANA, José Martí National Library To the entire staff in the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library who have collaborated in the promotion and preservation of the artist’s collection, and particularly the specialists whose research set the foundation for the work we are launching today

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Muchacha de las rosas de arena No.1 (Girl with Desert Roses No.1), 1977 Ink on cardboard, 650 x 500 mm MNBA collection

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Contents 232

We must know a painter…

Cándida C. Alonso López 234 10

My visits became a habit

Lourdes Álvarez Betancourt

238

Silence and Hope

Daniel Vías

14

…an immortal man in Cuban visual arts

Servando Cabrera Moreno

Marta Jiménez

22

240

Alfredo Guevara

Natalia Bolívar

28

242

PRELUDE TO A JOURNEY TOWARDS IMMORTALITY

Alejandro Montesinos

The Awareness of Being Myself A Renaissance Artist Part of the Time Beloved Claudia González Machado 52

I Am Late for the World AN ARTIST AT FULL SPEED…

Claudia González Machado 106

When Air Trembles Rosemary Rodríguez Cruz 144

Getting Used to That Taste

…such a good friend …he answered as an artist: creating his best art…

248

…very receptive and human Evidio Perdomo Rodríguez 250

The Miró Prize Tomás Sánchez 252

Protecting his art María Teresa Iglesias Álvarez

Rosemary Rodríguez Cruz 254

WHAT BELONGS TO US 214

THE LONG PATH OF NOSTALGIA 216

Servando was very courageous…

Margarita Ruiz 220

…he was larger than life itself

256

A Collection, a Mansion, a Museum Neida Peñalver Díaz 262

Passions of a Traveler Leonor de la Concepción Turiño Águila

Salvador Fernández 222

He owned a really extraordinary collection…

Marta Arjona 224

…a great walker in the city Enrique Capablanca 226 © Tito Álvarez

…how bright Servando is Orlando Yanes

272

THE SOURCE OF LIFE 274 CHRONOLOGY

Claudia González Machado 286 SOLO AND COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS. AWARDS AND PRIZES

292 REFERENCES

228

298

Gerardo Mosquera

INDEX OF WORKS

BY SERVANDO CABRERA MORENO

Sensuality marks his entire art…

9

10

Silence

and Hope

I

n the early days of 2008, after two decades of accumulated experience in visual arts, I was asked to head the recently opened Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library (MBSCM). Perhaps my personal relationship with this unusual Cuban artist was known.

In our home, José Villa1 and I are surrounded by works of art, some of them by Cabrera Moreno. Through Villa’s remembrances of his art school days, and those of many of his fellow students,2 I approached Servando’s legend and became acquainted with his teachings on art and life. While sharing their experiences, I confirmed their immense gratitude to their professor and, from this reliable source, I learned that S ­ ervando had been an exceptional, cultured, sensitive, courageous, human, and generous artist.

Other relationships connected me with Servando.

I knew that in 1969 my mother had bought La esperanza (Hope), a large erotic canvas no longer owned by her, that I unfortunately do not remember. Also, my great aunt, Ada ­Kourí, had been his cardiologist until the end of his life. And when I was vice president of SUBASTAHABANA3 in its early

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El silencio y la esperanza (Silence and Hope), 1981 Oil on canvas, 152 x 127 cm MBSCM collection

editions, we offered works by Cuban masters Raúl Martínez, Antonia ­Eiriz, and Servando Cabrera who hadn’t been shown in the more established spaces of the art market.

Today I think that life was preparing me for this endeavor. Once in the museum, I became familiar with Servando’s personal collection, a wealth of items gathered by a p ­ ainstaking collector who kept very well chosen pieces, at times exhibited on the walls of his home, as if in a museum. His sudden death left us only with his works and his personal property, like a fragmented story requiring urgent reconstruction. On the other hand, misunderstandings, censorship, aggressions, and upsetting experiences in his life and work brought about long silences and only a few written, radio, and television testimonies could acquaint us with his personal interests and concerns as an artist.

1

José Villa (1950), sculptor, studied under Servando, National Visual Arts Award, 2008.

2 In the early ‘60s, high school students with artistic abilities, chosen throughout the country, arrived in the capital to study at the National School of Art (ENA).

3

SUBASTAHABANA functions as part of Galería Habana. It is already in its 11th edition. The results of sales of Cabrera Moreno’s pieces are among the most significant.

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Consultations with Alfredo Guevara, the main architect of the preservation of this collection and of the existence of this museum, a review of the few interviews conducted during Servando’s lifetime, critical texts by Graziella Pogolotti and ­Gerardo Mosquera, and searches in the valuable archives of José Veigas were then required. New research led us to study, complete, and obtain testimonies from friends, colleagues, students, and others who had known him well and who generously shared their memories with us. These papers, collected since 2004 by the museologists in our institution, are preserved in our archives.4 The valuable unpublished bio-bibliography by art graduates Zoraida Pérez and Abel Molina is also a result of these studies.

The opening of the museum contributed to the promotion of Cabrera Moreno’s collection, a thesaurus of his personal belongings acquired from the family after the artist’s death.

In it are housed paintings by Servando, his students, and his colleagues, as well as pieces of decorative arts, documents, his personal library, and the largest and most valuable collection of European and American folk art in Cuba.

The presentation of various temporary exhibitions was the path that allowed us to stop at acknowledged periods and series in Servando’s works, on his folk art pieces, and to show his links with other arts. Abstraction, expressionism, epics, the “Habaneras,” the “Guajiros,” and his then controversial erotic works held a dialogue with the exhibitions and reveal the diversity of his interests. Paintings by various artists, religious art objects, ceramics, toys, fans, old photos, as well as designs and illustrations for magazines, books, theater, films, and ballets were exhibited, and reflect, as a whole, Cabrera Moreno’s multi-faceted body of work and collection. His personal library, included in the service of the library specializing in art, also attracts interested students and researchers.

We were working on the program to celebrate Servando’s ninetieth birthday, where we wanted to include a multimedia on his life and work, when Alejandro Montesinos5 introduced us to Nancy Rodríguez and outstanding photographer Julio ­Larramendi, from Ediciones Polymita.6 They were interested in compiling the complete works of the master. This wonderful and unexpected news offered us a desired and excellent project to complete the celebration.

Given Servando’s prolific and dispersed artistic production, this book would be the first in a series. Servando Cabrera Moreno. The Embrace of the Senses brings together pieces from the main collections of the Cuban state,7 complemented by some significant works in private collections and those put up for auction and sold at the annual event organized by SUBASTAHABANA. The chapters in the book, named after titles of his works, include critical texts, unpublished interviews, images of more than three hundred pieces, the chronology of the artist, and a note on the museum. Their mission is to guide the reader through the artist’s multiple facets of painter, teacher, collector, promoter, but, above all, to portray the man who, with integrity and dignity, never relinquished or betrayed his beliefs.

Servando Cabrera Moreno. The Embrace of the Senses, a dream and a wish come true, has been published thanks to the will of those who know that this volume has broken the silence once and for all, and the one thing ahead of us now is hope.

Thanks to them all.

Lourdes Álvarez Betancourt8

4 Lina Blanco was the first director of the institution (from late 2003 to January 2008). She was in charge of the restoration of the building and of forming its first technical team.

5

A painter, promoter, and Servando’s student.

6 Ediciones Polymita has published excellent volumes on science,

nature, heritage, and architecture.

7

Works from the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana (MNBA), the Museum of the City of Havana, the Council of State, the Cuban Institute of Film Art and Industry (ICAIC), and the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library.

8 Eng. Lourdes Álvarez has been the director of the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library since 2008. She was the vice president of the National Council of Fine Arts (CNAP) in the period of 1995-2005, and the vice president of SUBASTAHABANA in 2002-2004.

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Mayo de todas las flores (May in Flower), 1981 Oil on canvas, 148.4 x 99 cm MBSCM collection

13 SILENCE AND HOPE

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SERVANDO CABRERA MORENO

The Awareness

of Being Myself *

M

y studies were academic and I owe my work discipline to them. I studied hard and I remember my first exhibitions in Havana shortly before graduating from San Alejandro. I do not exactly remember whether they were held in 1941 or 1942, but I do recall the critiques and advice from Amelia Peláez and Carlos Enríquez. That was the beginning of my professional life.

In 1952 I took part in the 26th Venice Biennial together with artists Cundo Bermúdez, Amelia, Carreño, Felipe Orlando, Portocarrero, Martínez Pedro, Julio Girona, Víctor Manuel, Sandú Darié, Diago, Raúl Milián, Mariano, and Mijares. The following year I exhibited a series of paintings in Paris, in which my main concern was formal experience. Two weeks after it closed, I traveled to Spain and began some sketches, which gradually led me, through study, to an art with content. I drew the local people that were within my reach; these were realist works that portrayed families, peasants, rural women, bricklayers, all from Madrid, Seville, Granada, Badajoz, Cuenca, Salamanca, and Valladolid. Back in Cuba I painted Los niños de Trinidad (Children From Trinidad) and attended the shooting of El Mégano,9 whose characters I used as models: Cheo with his tres, and the charcoal burners, and that was how my commitment with Cuba began to emerge.

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La conciencia de ser yo (The Awareness of Being Myself), 1981 Oil on canvas, 158 x 124 cm MBSCM collection

Cabrera Moreno’s diploma as a Professor of Drawing and Painting from the San Alejandro National Fine Arts School (1942)

* Text based on interviews granted by Servando Cabrera Moreno in the period of 1956 to 1979. Aquiles, “El domingo de un joven pintor” (The Sunday of a Young Painter), Diario de la Marina, Havana, February 5, 1956 (interview after the closing of his exhibition in the National Institute of Culture), R. D. Fumagalli Justiniano: “Habla un pintor cubano. Exhibirá varias obras en Italia” (A Cuban Painter Talks.

He will exhibit some works in Italy); “Servando Cabrera Moreno”; Francisco Garzón Céspedes: “Cabrera Moreno”; José Manuel Otero: “Del premio y su obra habla Servando Cabrera” (Servando Cabrera Talks about the Award and His Work); José Eladio: “Habla Cabrera Moreno” (Cabrera Moreno Talks); Aldo Menéndez: “Habanera tú. Con Servando Cabrera Moreno” (Habanera tú. With Servando Cabrera Moreno); Maida Royero: “20 años de Teatro Estudio” (Twenty Years of Teatro Estudio); Marisol Trujillo: “Cuatro pintores en torno al cartel” (Four Painters on Posters).

9 A documentary film on the wretched life of charcoal burners in the Zapata Swamp, which was seized by the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities (BRAC, 1952-1958).

15

Pareja (Couple), 1964 Ink on paper, 648 x 500 mm MNBA collection

Shortly before that time, I had established links with the Teatro Estudio group,10 even before it had that name. Vicente Revuelta, Raquel, our unforgettable Ernestina Linares, and I frequently talked about different projects. Batista’s days were numbered and not many of us had the spirit to serve on every front. I conceived the emblem or symbol of the group, which emerged out of a need of its members, and I also designed some of the posters and programs. The horse, symbol of intelligence, virgin progress, and speed, has not stopped galloping and its mime has been able to speak. History has proven it is still effective, as a collective deed of the group. This symbol is in its own house and, as far as I am concerned, I feel at home in Teatro Estudio.

I have always loved Cuban colonial architecture, and this makes me focus my attention on the ornamentation in railings, cornerstones, arches, and stained-glass windows. I am also es-

10 A theater group established in 1958 by young artists with cultural and political concerns. It opened in 1956 with the premiere of an adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s Joan of Lorraine. Its director was Raquel Revuelta until her death.

11 The bombings of Santa Clara city in 1958, during the last days of Fulgencio Batista’s regime.

12 A ship under the French flag which exploded in the port of Havana in 1960 as a result of sabotage.

13 Servando is referring to the young students who, in 1961, carried out the Literacy Campaign throughout the country. They were known as brigadistas (members of the literacy brigade).

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La Coubre, 1961 Charcoal on paper, 1,000 x 635 mm MNBA collection OPPOSITE PAGE

Jacinto, 1973 Colored pencil on paper, 890 x 605 mm MBSCM collection

pecially fond of folk art expressions: the decorations and forms in pottery, toys, and popular paintings, mainly from Spain, Guatemala, Mexico, and Portugal. Observation from nature and the assimilation of these studies throughout the years have helped me compose some formal aspects of my work.

At the time of the revolution, my paintings portrayed human figures in a very schematic manner, profusely enriched with elements of our flora and architecture, which gradually disappeared until the figure became the center of the process we were beginning to live. Its events and characters became the entire subject matter of my work; figures of heroes, rebel horsemen, militia men and women, peasants, workers appeared next to the Santa Clara bombings,11 La Coubre,12 Playa Girón, the murder of the literacy brigade member,13 and, in the midst of them all, our glorious bearded men.

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along with Modigliani’s Venus, and after those by ­Giorgione and Titian, the passion in Rodin’s sculpture, Michelangelo’s infinite love, Tamayo’s Indians in America. This is an expression of love, and Cuba is full of love. Love is my topic; it was and will continue to be. Without love conception cannot exist.

I was surprised by my success in the Joan Miró International Prize for Drawing in 196914 Margarita Ruiz gave me the news on the phone; in fact, I had rather forgotten the competition and what I had submitted. Cuba’s presence in an international event is an honor and a great responsibility, and I was also pleased because it was created by Joan Miró, one of the most outstanding artists of this century.

Certificate from the Joan Miró International Prize for Drawing, signed by Miró

I became aware of the silhouette through Picasso, whom I imitated, copied, and assimilated, as well as through Paul Klee and Matisse; Miró —whom I almost traced— gave me space; Fernand Leger was very importFirst Mention medal awarded to ant. I assimilated Goya, El Greco, Botticelli, Cabrera Moreno Michelangelo, and the mannerist moveat the Joan Miró ment. If asked about the paintings I have International Prize seen, I would take three: Uccello’s The Batfor Drawing tle of San Romano, which is in the Louvre, Goya’s The Third of May 1808…, the large one that is in the Prado Museum, and Picasso’s Guernica. I think the three have a fantastic association, a brutal undercurrent of commotion.

Cubans move in a way that sets them apart from the rest of the world. The way a palm tree sways and a fig tree twists is comparable to the motion, gait, or insinuation of any body part of a Cuban, even if it be a little finger. This may be for themselves, for the enjoyment and observation of others, or for an exchange between both, in which an act of beauty, which has its own characteristics in Cuba, takes place. It is a duty to understand and comprehend this with deep affection and admiration.

It is not new in our history or in that of other peoples. We can go back to Carlos Enríquez’s style of painting, a large part of ­Picasso’s works, Courbet’s realism, Manet and his Olympia, 18

Los gemelos (Twins), 1974 Ink on cardboard, 715 x 512 mm MBSCM collection

14 Artist from 29 countries participated in this competition.

Servando received the first mention with his drawing Flor de carne (Flower of Flesh).

THE AWARENESS OF BEING MYSELF

All techniques are difficult if they are rigorously followed. I express myself better in oil, which offers me adventure and allows me to create nuances. Different pigments can be mixed until I achieve the vibration I’m interested in, not only the one offered by the paint tube. I like watercolors, but real watercolors, leaving the whiteness of paper, and wash drawings too. I paint every morning and I draw in the afternoons and at night. I work every day and, if I’m not painting, I’m thinking about painting.

When painting, what is automatic and intuitive is not always valid or good; on a surface, you must choose what you want to keep. I paint in four directions and check the colors in the mirror. If something bothers you in one sense, it means that it’s wrong in the other. I envision and then paint directly; I rarely make sketches and, if I do, I change them quite a lot. I engage in a dialogue with the elements in a painting, and picture them all at once in my mind. I have to play with a color above to match the one below. This is a deliberate and also studied technique. In a space where there are various elements, all points are important. A painter who says “now I’m here and I’ll fill it in later” is a bad painter.

In grey and black drawings, with a dry brush, there are no nuances, but values, as when black turns into grey. Pen drawings require much dexterity, skill, pulse. My favorite colors are blue and various mauves; and I like very much the cold gamut and the whites. Through yellows with greens and blues you can depict Cuban soil, and with a touch of orange, blue becomes bluer. A painter is a painter when he turns black or a grey into lemon yellow. All colors appear in my paintings and I succeed at transparencies, which is a way to conceive painting.

I am interested in every expression of visual art. Cuban film posters, for example, I believe must be given the place they deserve. This is a subject I have followed with pleasure and also because I am an avid collector. The creation of Cuban Institute of Fil and Art Industry (ICAIC) fostered the development of our visual arts and created a closer link among artists, painters, poster artists, and designers. Being functional, decorative, and collectible, Cuban graphics have received and assimilated the influence of the most vital and creative foreign trends. Just look at Raúl Martínez and his pop poster for Lucía, and René Azcuy with Besos Robados (Stolen Kisses), perhaps the best Cuban poster, which with his usual economy of colors, and his individual way of working with black and white, offers us the dramatic quality of expressionism.

I see mural painting as a work of integration of the painter and the architect. In Cuba there are enough unfortunate experiences —with few exceptions— by professionals and improvised painters who have indiscriminately smeared walls. They are a voracious pest and a sad reality. I also consider it convenient to promote industrial design depending on its utilitarian need and the cultural level of our people, who

RAÚL MARTÍNEZ. Lucía, 1968 Silkscreen, 760 x 510 mm

RENÉ AZCUY. Besos robados (Stolen Kisses), 1970 Silkscreen, 760 x 510 mm 19

UMBERTO PEÑA. Untitled, 1968 Mixed on foil, 240 x 320 mm MBSCM collection

WIFREDO LAM. Untitled, 1954 Ink on cardboard, 395 x 295 mm MBSCM collection

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ANTONIA EIRIZ. Los académicos (The Academics), 1958 Ink on cardboard, 716 x 870 mm MBSCM collection

­ emand quality utensils and an appropriate design, d whether it be a pack of cigarettes or mechanical equipment. Teachings from industrial art centers in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia are outstanding in this sense.

The quality of an artist today, as well as that of a master in the past, should be judged taking into account the historical time in which they live.

Taking this into consideration, I can say that I’ve been especially impressed by the Spanish artists, from the primitives to Valdés Leal, Zurbarán, Velázquez, El Greco, Goya, Solana, and Picasso.

Other artists whose work I have always closely followed are Uccello and Mantegna, Courbet and Van Gogh, Matisse and Orozco.

Twentieth century pictorial production is exhaustive. My favorite foreign painters, in addition to those previously mentioned, are De Kooning, Bacon, Motherwell, Saura, and Tamayo, among others; actually, having named only these, I’m leaving out many that interest me. In Cuba there are classic examples too: Lam, Portocarrero, Amelia… but I also have in mind the work of Antonia Eiriz, Raúl Martínez, Umberto Peña and, again, I leave out some others who should be taken into account.

And, above all, I am interested in the younger painters, in what the emerging generation is doing under the Revolution.

I would recommend that young painters think about what they want, to take into consideration the environment in which they live; to look around them and not to make their lives impossible in the face of technical virtuosity. To do more than a painting and a drawing at the same time, and not for exhibitions, to which they should send selected works. Also to study, because painting is not isolated from the rest of the arts, from the street, from our horizon and its relationship with the others, from life and why we are here. If they are going to be painters, so be it, and if they are going to be artists, to think much more seriously; they should reflect the society in which they live, the period in which they exist, to express the issues that concern them, those which offend their sensitivity.

Although I am young at heart, those who are young in age have a better view of the present movement. The passionate and vehement excitement we felt during our formative years in the presence of Picasso’s figures or Klee’s textures, now moves our younger fellow artists with photography, hyperrealist painting, or any other recent “ism.” It is admirable and it fills me with enthusiasm, although I cannot make it my own. It is as if, allowing for the obvious differences, in the times of Tachism, Picasso would have raved about Soulages’ findings. Only true creative artists overcome the passing of time. How many tachists are left? Only its true exponents. Of the multiple current trends, how many will remain? Among its artists, only the authentic exponents; others will use them as a means or a bridge, some as an experiment, while others, the least fortunate, as a fashion.

Unforgettable experiences have accompanied me during my years of work, as well as an insatiable restlessness for renewal. I still am, as Graziella Pogolotti once said, “a lonely walker” in Cuban painting, or as Ñica, my brilliant and very close friend Antonia Eiriz, called me once: “a missing link.”

I have gone through different phases; they were entered through conviction, exploration, or as a reaction to the immediately previous one. I have been honest in all of them with the means I had available; I do not deny the influences in my training and my personal tastes. I have had influences, I have studied, I have been moved by painters, artists, peoples, popular and political demonstrations, countries, solidarity, and communication with other artists and with humble people. I detest white that kills all color and perhaps, with the passing of time, I have become somewhat reserved.

I do not accept theoretical painters or laziness towards creation and, much less, unjustified pretexts vis-à-vis a line of canvases or a stack of papers waiting for the artist to undertake them. This evasion is dangerous, since it entails the subtraction of our vital circumstances and of the deep wealth of our medium.

I do not consider any of my paintings or drawings entirely unrelated to the previous or later ones. I would say that there

Antonia Eiriz and Servando Cabrera at the inauguration of Salon 70, July 29, 1970. Palacio de Bellas Artes

is an umbilical cord unavoidably joining them. My quest for searching and my passion for what is human were transformed through various stages, but deep inside of me I am always very vigilant, with an intimate concern for offering my truth.

As for the appreciation of my work, there has been enough for every taste, although I am often surprised by the distant interpretation and confusion aroused by a piece that I have honestly guided down totally opposite paths. There are always many eyes with lifeless pupils, loose words, and long silences for all this, and at times nothing is accurate! I consider that an art piece is sooner or later acknowledged for its precise value. This does not always happen when it first comes out, so we must wait. That is why it has been said that artists have helped by anticipating and encouraging historic processes. The recognition that satisfies me the most, of course, is a sincere opinion in a simple and intelligent conversation.

I keep on observing and thinking, in order to project myself in my art. I am always pleased when I paint or draw, but much more so when I understand what I still can do, and much less so when I think that I will not have enough time. I do not have future plans, only one and always the same one: to paint more and better. I wish I could see all the achievements of the Revolution, to live to be ninety-four years old, to take a gentle stroll in the Europe where I studied, and to relive the Spain that I knew town by town.

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Pr贸logo sin palabras (Prologue without Words), 1975 Oil on canvas, 76 x 119 cm MBSCM collection

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ALFREDO GUEVARA15

A Renaissance

Artist

T

he regal doors of great cathedrals were not thrown open for a painter born on Calle Obispo, yet his dazzling canvases invent walls, domes, apses, all on which to paint frescoes that show human eternity, infinity captured in the scintillation of the artist’s work: a final instant to perceive, perhaps, the immense immenseness of the entire Universe. Only art can do this and, if it can, only that mystic praise may be called art.

Love is fulfilled the moment copulation turns into ecstasy, leaving in the conscience a feeling of absolute giving; the surrendering of existence, the longing of two beings to become one, the entwining of bodies yearning to be souls, and vanishing within the soul. In this vanishing lies the essence, a revealing combat without respite, a swaying captured by Servando in a fragment, which in the fragment alone becomes eternal. Thus Servando preserves forever that moment of love which, attained and detained, saves what it has been and now is only true on canvas and in memories. On canvas and in memories time moves on, but that instant is a repeated mark of the giving of one to the other and the other to the one, beyond the flesh, and becomes a symbol. Symbol, key, imprint, signal that reveals to us in an image the fragmented unity of the Universe.

That contest of love, angst, hope, and yearning for eternity slipping away, because it is replaced and repeated and reproduced, and goes on and on, makes continual motion another possible definition of Man’s discovery of his human nature. Eternal creativity is to be found in life and is its very essence; it is love for another, the one you draw, this being you depict, that impulse that makes from life the life deserving to be called life.

15 A friend of Servando. Guevara was the founding president of ICAIC. Until his death, he headed the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema held annually in Havana.

23

Palmar, 1963 Oil on canvas, 162 x 92.5 cm Cuban Council of State collection 24

A RENAISSANCE ARTIST

La trinchera de Caná (The Trench of Caná), 1976 Tempera on paper, 495 x 640 mm MBSCM collection

If becoming does not cease, nothing ceases, and if man, the protagonist, participates in becoming, it is fitting that a man-artist captures, for benefit and understanding, an instant full of beauty and tension, and hands us an enlightening code. Servando was a kind of Leonardo. Thus, in the uncharted jungle he depicts in vines interlaced with tissue of human guerrillas, which will no longer be that, but a jungle, a forest, a territory in which his body hides and, hiding, saves his presence. It is that immense love with no borders, the force moving through the Universe, which moves through all of Servando; in brutal or clear copulation; in sex displayed as a living totem pole, in the young armed men in the jungle who in the green vines engrave the future of our world. In it, yesterday, today or tomorrow, barely traced, beautiful shining faces are to be, and will always be, protagonists.

How important could it be that Mona Lisa might have been inspired by the face of this man or that woman, an already forgotten man or a strange woman? What really matters is her disquieting expression, the mystery of this smile in our memory, or rather in our conscience; forcing us to think, perhaps other thoughts, leaving behind a questioning state of mind. Art’s ambiguity offers uneasiness to viewers willing to appreciate it, and perhaps this may well be its supreme virtue: the fascinating diversity of perception.

A seemingly audacious story will not allow for a better understanding, or an attempt at understanding a work by a great and complex artist. Anecdotes cannot help us understand dazzling works oblivious of specifics, which, overflowing onto its protagonist, go beyond a chance meeting, a thousand meetings, in order to reach a specific stroke, a precise color, hue, shade or transparency or tint or provocative movement or blow or halted rhythm wanting to escape the canvas, restless —knowing it is ­trapped forever.

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Recalling the words of the Oracle at Delphi “know thyself” Xirau summarized love as Plato understood it, not by denying what is temporary or holding on to what is permanent, but in an unstoppable journey from the fleeting to the eternal. That is why in Phaeton we see that “in life there is death and in death, life.” The essence of the opposite in its opposite, underlying dialectics of the One made and unmade in every instant in order to be and continue to be. Constant movement ruled by love, and that out of nothingness and ­chaos brings forth all that we can name and number, arranging all existing things in Cosmos. The platonic scheme of erotic dynamics will therefore allow us to say that from Dionysius we finally arrive at Apollo’s serenity. In this orgiastic game of accurate lines, Servando is a master among us. The master designer who wraps in color and shades what might otherwise overflow or transcend.

Perhaps in the oneness of the One —more than capable because of being limitless— lies infinite diversity; and from this diversity, that other one, those many other ones, the salt of the earth here, and the salt of the Universe, comes the substance of attractions, where the vital impulse, Eros-Love, might become a spring or Logos embodying the urgent need to approach another face, a particle-to-particle urgency; the need to discover, know, join or repel. Servando Cabrera Moreno was perhaps chosen by one of the Graces, and in his work I perceive something more than an image at times constructed or deconstructed. It is more than this; the image transcends itself, it is the original cell he wanted to display in each stroke: fleeing shadows and Mystery, keen to appear on the thousand painted faces.

Servando, our artist, born in Havana, a harbor spreading out to the rest of the world from its Atlantic Ocean, an Atlantic city that gave him his vitality. It did not offer him folklore or palm trees; maracas or magical bongo drums; the heavenly beauty of mulatto girls and ephebi: rhythmic, varied female attitudes or orchestrated maleness. His city did offer him though her open sea, a constantly moving Infinite, waves flowing and breaking on the rocks, subsiding to reshape in other forms.

Repeated images forever new. Standing in front of the Cathedral in this our Havana, sea vision, sublime angle, Golden Rule, taking a deep look from the outside, Lezama discovered an ongoing wave of columns and spaces and contrasts, living rock populated by fossils, bathed by the essence of the Baroque.

Just like columns one above the other, maritime christening of the Baroque, transparencies longing for lost light, evanescent forms, strokes, pastels, bodies so perfect they are ungraspable. Intertwined, they transcend themselves when one flesh softly plunges into flesh, becoming him, her, the other, yet preserving their well-defined profiles. Servando’s canvases turn into flat cathedrals, amphorae, zealously keeping the Mysteries and provocatively and aggressively inciting to secret calm allowing them to reach oceanic love in holy communion. An ocean of auras is its deepest root.

He lives immoderately in our memory, a memory that grows with his works. A different love, a love distinct and unique; a love that could, in an unflagging sowing, leave its imprint forever. An imprint of creation and beauty and also of truth and human kindness. Servando, a man born of this land, who in this land is still alive and will live forever; a contemporary and very modern man; an artist born I have said and reborn I say: a Man/Artist of the Renaissance.

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Mayo incita y apena (May Provokes and Distresses), 1979 Oil on canvas, 200 x 121 cm Private collection 26

Parte del tiempo amado (Part of the Time Beloved), 1979 Ink on cardboard, 540 x 740 mm MBSCM collection

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CLAUDIA GONZÁLEZ MACHADO16

Part of the

Time Beloved

PRELUDE TO A JOURNEY TOWARDS IMMORTALITY … it has the immortal breath, but visible, characterizing the creations of the chosen ones.

Armando Maribona

P

art of the Time Beloved is the title of a pen-andink drawing Servando Cabrera Moreno made in 1979, two years before his death. At that moment, the artist had already gone through numerous schools of art and had learned (and grasped) the difficult lessons of creative freedom and synthesis. With just a few lines and a commendable respect for the white of the cardboard, Cabrera Moreno’s drawing builds a universe of gestures and sensuality. That was Servando at 56 years of age; the man and the artist knew how to discern between different forms of expression, never forgetting, and in fact, constantly remembering, his first steps in art.

From an early age, he knew his destiny was marked by a single action: painting. He admitted that fact in 1969 when he said: “I have been lucky. Since I was ten years old I knew I wanted to be just one thing: a painter.”17 Early on his family noticed the child’s ability and encouraged the development of his innate talent. Young Servando illustrated the love poems of his aunt and godmother Isabel with simple drawings that showed his pristine talent in the use of color and the exactness of his strokes. This was also the case with his homework for María Corominas Elementary School: his geography album is a piece of unquestionable value. There, with admirable skill in his work with volume and shadow, he depicted the phases of the moon, the various types of clouds, the layers of the earth, the eclipses… and in each one of these drawings the signature of the child Servando is present. This (artistic) homework received the highest grades.

16 Graduate in History of Art, museologist since 2010, curator of the exhibitions A Discovered Magic and Cabrera Moreno’s Collections.

17 “Influencia popular. El arte de Cabrera Moreno” (Popular Influence. Cabrera Moreno’s Art). n. d.

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Notebooks of poems belonging to Isabel, Servando’s aunt.

MBSCM collection

Album painted by Servando for his Geography class.

MBSCM collection

Beginning his studies in the San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy in 1936 was not only a predictable event in Cabrera Moreno’s life, but also a personal need of the incipient artist. A sort of creative frenzy was set loose in him, a characteristic he would never abandon, even in his most fateful moments. He studied history of art and was dazzled by the works of the great masters: Botticelli, Uccello, Raphael, Titian, Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo, Rembrandt… and, later, Picasso, who captured his attention in an extraordinary manner and left an indelible imprint on his early pieces. No wonder the Spanish painter was mentioned time and again in the few interviews ­given by Servando we still have. This was the painter who, in ­Servando’s own words, “I imitated, copied, and assimilated.”18 As a first year student studying color, he received a commission to paint a portrait of the great AJEF (Association of 30

Youth, Hope of the Fraternity) leader Fernando Suárez Núñez which, together with a portrait of Benito Juárez, was sent to the AJEF Lodge in Mexico. It should not be forgotten that, in those times, Servando belonged to the AJEF José Escandell Pujol Lodge and that his father, Servando Cabrera Sánchez, was a member of the Fraternal Love Lodge. Unfortunately, no photographs of this canvas have been found, but it highlights the early incorporation of the artist to his craft and to the cultural circles of the times, fostered to a large extent by his family and by the stable economic situation in which he lived.

It did not take long for his professors (Armando García Menocal, Domingo Ramos, Ramón Loy, Leopoldo Romañach, Luisa Fernández, Manuel Vega, Concha Ferrant…) to notice the discipline and talent of this young man in whom they saw a hope for Cuban academic painting. He was so eager to excel in

Books from Servando’s personal library.

MBSCM collection

Classmates at the San Alejandro National Fine Arts School, 1941. Bottom row: Antonio Alejo, Roberto Garriga and Orlando Jambú. Top row: Mario Perdigó, Roberto Diago Querol, Roberto Estopiñán and Servando Cabrera

his education that he took drawing twice, claiming he disagreed with the first place award given to Antonio Ferrer ­Cabello, a scholarship student from Santiago de Cuba.

When he was only 17 years old, Cabrera Moreno exhibited, for the first time, a painting in the 22nd Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes. The piece, Niña negra (Black Girl), gained him acknowledgement in the art milieu and was the evidence of his nascent interest in depicting ethnic traits, which gain emphasis in future years. Journalist Cristian Rozales hinted at it when, in a

18 José Eladio, “Habla Cabrera Moreno” (Cabrera Moreno Talks), p. 26.

19 Cristian Rozales: “El XXII Salón de Bellas Artes” (The 22nd Fine

Arts Salon), n. p.

review published in Avance newspaper, he mentioned Niña Negra as “…a ‘little head’ with much life.”19 By 1942 Servando had graduated from San Alejandro with twelve awards in various subjects and the highest grades.

One of these awards was for landscapes, a genre he quickly abandoned. This was not the case with portraits, which accompanied him throughout his career and, in fact, marked much of his future work.

It was precisely charcoal portraits that Servando —a Drawing and Painting professor at the time— showed in his first solo exhibition at the Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club in Havana, 1943. The catalogue includes the opinions of renowned figures who did not hesitate to acknowledge the mastery of the young painter. Leo­poldo Romañach, for example, predicted that Servando had “a brilliant future in the field of 31

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There is in him the palette and the pupil, that is, the eye that knows how to look, and with a profound sense of color. There is also the knowledge and concept of drawing. […] Let us take a good look at this newly born artist. Yes. Do not be alarmed.

You are born to art as you are born to life, and you grow in it, as in life itself, under the relentless influence of immutable signs. In a way, Servando Cabrera Moreno is barely beginning his hour —a beautiful, splendid hour!— of sowing. Secure and trusting, I call upon him for the future, for the time to harvest.20

A year later, in the 1st Salón de Otoño. he was awarded first prize for a gouache, thus reaffirming his dexterity in drawing and sensitivity in capturing expressions through rapid and restless lines which endowed this new Niña (Girl) with a spontaneous dynamism. Praise was quick in coming and, with such a good reception, the artist felt encouraged and was persistent in his creations, betraying neither his “palette” nor his “pupil”, both with a polished academic evocation. However, in the 27th Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes, held in 1945, Cabrera Moreno showed a timid, but evident, distancing from the more orthodox canons of representation. In this case, he participated with a portrait of Fernando Núñez de Villa­vi­cencio which became, much to his surprise, one of the most famous paintings of the times. This piece, now in the collection of the MNBA, was awarded the bronze medal, which caused many comments by the critics. Ernestina Otero considered the 27th Salón a disappointment, since it only served to prove the interest of artists to criticize each other, and the indifference of the viewers toward the art. She was no less surprised by the awards, mainly the one granted to Cabrera Moreno, whose proposal, “in spite of departing from academic canons, in the figure and the color, does not enter into that horrible deformation of […] modern art.”21 Allowing for obvious differences, Servando’s portrait escaped, although barely, from the usual cataloguing as “academic art.” The treatment of the background and the portrayed person no longer expressed interest in the accurate representation of life, but rather took pleasure in subtle strokes

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Retrato de Núñez de Villavicencio (Portrait of Núñez de Villavicencio), 1945 Oil on canvas and cardboard, 89.5 x 79.5 cm MNBA collection

of subdued, cold, melancholic colors, not without a hint of nostalgia. This is, in brief, a gently harmonic and expressive painting, endowed with great technical mastery. That is why the journalist insisted that the bronze medal was not properly granted.

This portrait, together with others like Vivien and Semi­ na­rista de los ojos verdes (Seminarian with Green Eyes), was shown at the artist’s next exhibition in September that same year, 1945,22 at the Cuban Reporters’ Association. What attracts the viewer’s attention is the technique used by Cabrera Moreno in the composition of backgrounds and garments, created with a base of soft but meticulous color combinations, a sort of polychrome mist. He blended some colors with others, to create environments with a tenuous and exquisite sensuality. These were environments involved “…in a delicate gamut of grey and clouds of poetic exaltation which, in spite of differences, remind us of Whistler.”23 We could also add some reminiscences of his own professors, especially the Romañach of La niña de las cañas (The Girl of the Sugar Cane) or the Menocal of Carga al machete (Machete Charge), and even of landscapist Domingo Ramos, with his paintings of quick and blurred color brushstrokes.

Something similar happens with the faces of his portraits, a difficult to ignore languor emerging from their features. Vivien, for example, is a young girl in pastel colors and pinks, whose gaze, fixed on the spectator’s eyes, is disarming, since it wavers between eroticism and anguish. The green ribbons in her ochre hair may be a chromatic reaffirmation of this pleasant ambivalence in which “harmony has an absolutely free eurhythmy and color is a definition.”24 Similarly, with Seminarian Servando plays with the blue and grey nuances and gave the face a “lost” look, which seems to break free from the tangible. On the other hand, Abandonado (Abandoned) is outstanding because of the sweet expression of the infant ­portrayed; it reveals, like few other pieces do, the detachment of the artist when painting landscapes.

PART OF THE TIME BELOVED

pictorial art,” as did M ­ ariana Fornaguera (president of the Patronato de las Artes Plásticas), who arrived at a similar conclusion after emphasizing his “…force in expression and sense of fluidity.” For her part, journalist Mariblanca Sabas Alomá — whom Servando had depicted in one of his pieces in this exhibition— expressed with a prophetic and metaphoric tone:

20 Mariblanca Sabas Alomá: Catalogue for the Exposición de retratos

al carbón por Servando Cabrera Moreno (Exhibition of Charcoal Portraits by Servando Cabrera Moreno).

21 Ernestina Otero: “El XXVII Salón de Bellas Artes” (The 27th Fine

Arts Salon), n. p.

22 Some months earlier, Servando had taken part in the Salón de Primavera de la Sociedad Nacional de Bellas Artes (Spring Salon of the National Fine Arts Society), with pieces like Srta. Virginia Palicio (Miss Virginia Palicio), a sweet oil painting, and Capullo (Bud), a painstaking composition denoting the accomplishment of the artist in his work with soft chromatic ranges.

23 Jorge Mañach: Catalogue for Exposición Cabrera Moreno (Cabrera

Moreno Exhibition).

24 Rafael Marquina: “Una visita al Salón”, (A Visit to the Salon), p. 11.

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El seminarista de los ojos verdes (Seminarian with Green Eyes), n. d.

Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 68 cm Private collection

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PART OF THE TIME BELOVED

Vivien, 1945 Oil on canvas, 75 x 62.5 cm MBSCM collection

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Motivo de ballet (Ballet Motif), c. 1940 Oil on canvas, 31 x 29 cm Private collection

We are in the presence of works that, for Jorge Mañach, lack any sign of “tropicalism.” It is a style of painting where Cuban elements are not explicit as symbol and expression.

Therefore, it is, “…the painting of a cold land, mature with civilization and daydreams.”25 Servando is able to stand out with a unique and different signature in the midst of a context oversaturated with works that, under the name of “tropicalism,” take great delight in the exuberance of color and the lushness of forms. In this context, it would be worthwhile to remember Roberto Fandiño who, years later, had this to say about “tropicalist” pieces: “…who knows if with a better study we would find out they really obey the influence of fauvist painters, since the reality of our immediate physical environment is mostly rather whitish, monotone in color, and dismantled.”26

25 Rafael Marquina: Op. cit., p. 11.

26 Roberto Fandiño: Op. cit., p. 24.

27 Luis de Soto: Catalogue for Exposición Cabrera Moreno (Cabrera

Moreno’s Exhibition) 36

This is how Servando, then only 22 years old, managed to slip away from frequently superficial classifications by specialized critics and, from the beginning of his career, became one of the most remarkable Cuban artists. Not in vain Luis de Soto, who also honored the catalogue with his writing, considered him a realist painter, but not “…academic, or romantic, or impressionist, or expressionist, or surrealist.”27 He is, then, an artist who has skillfully learned to camouflage himself between one school of art and another; an artist who is classic and modern, traditional and avant-garde… and, above all, he is himself.

Not only portraits were shown in this celebrated exhibition. There were also some depictions of dancers, which owe much to Degas, and two nudes foreshadowing another of the author’s preferred themes. Over the years, nudes became not a part, but an eternal expression of the beloved times.

This exhibition gave rise to a thundering welcome of the young artist. It was no coincidence that a year later he took part in the 28th Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes and received effusive compliments in Cuban publications. Rafael Marquina saw in him a “self-assured painter with a vision guiding his hand towards the serenity of restlessness, which in art is the way to

PART OF THE TIME BELOVED

Alicia Alonso en Giselle (Alicia Alonso in Gisselle), 1946 Oil on canvas, 121.8 x 69.5 cm Museum of Dance collection

capture eternity”,28 upon viewing the portraits of Srta. Gloria ­Sevilla, Sr. García Montes de Oca, and the aforementioned ­Vivien. Today these portraits are part of the group of works by the artist in the Museum and Library bearing his name.

It was also in 1946 that one of Servando’s most cherished dreams came true: to improve his knowledge abroad. In the inscription on a monograph on Rembrandt, part of his vast book collection, his mother wrote: “From the bottom of my heart I ask God every day that you can fulfill your desire of widening your knowledge abroad and that you may represent our Cuba as it honorably deserves.”29 Once this wish was fulfilled, he embarked on his first artistic study trip to Canada and, later, to one of the world’s most distinguished schools of art: the Art Students League of New York. Coincidentally, this was the same school where Amelia Peláez, whom Servando always admired, had studied in the first half of the 1920s.This institution, founded in 1875 by a group of artists mostly from the National Academy of Design, was, and still is one of the best centers for the teaching of modern art. Figures like Alexander Calder, Man Ray, ­Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd, and Roy Lichtenstein, among many others, studied there. It was the school that triggered Cabrera Moreno’s life as an artist.

At The Art Students League he took drawing and painting courses with professors as prominent as Ivan Olinsky (famous for his Whistler-influenced portraits of women) and Jon Corbino (known, among other things, for his presentations of dancers behind the scene). Undoubtedly, what he enjoyed most was discovering Pablo Picasso’s painting, alive, with all its wealth, and not “through reproductions that are almost always inexact and with inaccurate color.”30 He was especially impressed by the Spanish painter’s pink, blue, and classic periods, in which he saw a base for future works. He enjoyed a similar pleasure before the mastery of Goya, Chaim Soutine… and the creations of several Spanish artists he examined at length in the Hispanic Society of America Art Museum in New York.

28 Rafael Marquina; “El XXVII Salón de Bellas Artes” (The 27th Fine Arts Salon), p. 11.

29 Unpublished dedication by Margarita Moreno Alcázar to her son

Servando Cabrera Moreno, dated May 28, 1944. The book belongs to the heritage collection of personal documents of the artist, kept in the MBSCM. 30 Luis de Soto: Op. cit.

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LEOPOLDO ROMAÑACH La niña de la cañas (The Girl of the Sugar Cane), n. d.

Oil on canvas, 71.5 x 56 cm MNBA collection

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Guajiro con cañas (Peasant with ­Sugar Cane), 1947 Oil on canvas, 40.6 x 35.6 cm Private collection

Once back in Cuba, there was a substantial change in his style: a thematic expansion to motifs which would accompany him forever (such as the peasants and lovers) and to other themes that, although already announced (nudes), were now reinforced in works with greater freedom. An example could be the oil painting Guajiro con cañas (Peasant with ­Sugar Cane), from 1947; the theme does not hide its connection with the canvas La niña de las cañas (Girl of the Sugar Cane) by the master painter Romañach. But the link with tradition is just that, since Servando goes further and revels in color, contrasting the yellow of the shirt with the blue in the sky, and the green eyes of the peasant. The sugar cane fields are just long lines and a few rather ochre brushstrokes, without the naturalism Romañach infused into them in his portrait, nor the impressionist mark of the paintbrush. Servando’s interest in misty environments had disappeared and the freedom to use color and lines expanded: he achieved a work with fauvist tonalities, Romañach’s theme, and a liberation much his own.

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PART OF THE TIME BELOVED OPPOSITE PAGE

Muchacho (Boy), 1948 Oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm MNBA collection

In 1948 Cabrera Moreno presented an exhibition at the Lyceum with oil paintings, pastels, and drawings that reflected a much more perceptible distancing from academicism. He gave visible form to dancers, harlequins, athletes, groups of people, nudes, and portraits. Clearly, this is an undeniable thematic growth, which does not hide its links with European art.31 His portrait Muchacho (Boy), for example, shows more than a few similarities to the works of El Greco: the expressive lengthening of the figure’s features (now naked, without the affectation of clothes), differentiating it from a naturalist presentation, and the somber atmosphere of the composition.

The use of thick black lines, markedly delineating the boy and circumscribing him from the background, attracts attention.

This, together with the sinuosity of the lines, the exaggerated elongation of the figure’s neck, and the melancholic look, may also remind us of Modigliani.

The background has changed too: it is no longer misty, neutral, and cold, but more defined and realistic. Traces of Whistler, Sargent, and Romañach are no longer present: soft lines and transparencies have surfaced. As time passed, Servando would exploit this last resource in canvases with a deep lyricism.

The bowed head of the boy, his almond-shaped and intensely black eyes, his smooth and healthy-looking skin, the sinuosity of his hair, and the exquisite treatment of the background glazes make this portrait a piece with a matchless tenderness.

Del ensayo (From the Rehearsal) shows the artist’s interest in working with volume and depth. This is not through painstaking or meticulous form, but rather an exploration —somehow ludic and even naïf— of the painting’s physical

Figura (Figure), n. d.

Oil on paper, 518 x 471 mm MNBA collection

space and the potential symbiosis of figure and background.

The brush strokes of the dancers are somewhat haphazard, as are the stage planks and the narrow room where they practice.

The curtains in the foreground indicate that we are attending a rehearsal to which we came, just as Servando did, en passant, as if it were a fleeting scene infiltrating the eye of an unknown person. To the right and back, an open door illuminates the space and highlights the bodies.

In a different sense, Playa (Beach) is an interesting example of his concern for depicting groups of people and nudes, while the seascape in the back is sparsely sketched in a few strokes. Red and yellow, on the pastel of the bodies and the blue of the sea, create a rich and striking contrast.

31 His interest in transcending the limits of visual arts leads Cabrera Moreno to join numerous set designers, especially Rubén Vigón, to hold, also in 1948, an exhibition of set design projects at the Lyceum.

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PART OF THE TIME BELOVED OPPOSITE PAGE

Del ensayo (From the Rehearsal), 1948 Oil on canvas and cardboard 60.5 x 45.5 cm MNBA collection

Playa (Beach), n. d.

Oil on cardboard 62 x 39 cm MNBA collection 43

Arlequín azul (Blue Harlequin, reproduction), 1948 Oil on canvas, 101.2 x 77 cm Postcard. Private collection

Harlequin (reproduction), 1948 Postcard. Private collection

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Undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful pieces in the exhibition was Arlequín azul (Blue Harlequin), whose whereabouts are unfortunately unknown. In it, as in few examples of that time, Picasso’s imprint can be perceived on the subject matter, as well as on the color and the lengthened physiognomy of the character. Just as with many acrobats by the genius from Málaga, Servando’s harlequin is very snugly dressed, as if it were a second skin that highlights the plasticity of the body. This also applies to the space where the figure lies comfortably on a bed, as if dreaming. In this place of solitude and relaxation, without an audience or a circus atmosphere, the harlequin seems odd, but intensely calm, sensual, erotic.

Although this 1948 example showed the transformation that was taking place in Servando’s art, it is also true that critics were rather unsatisfied, since in his painting they noticed a somewhat too explicit influence of the European artists Cabrera Moreno had seen (and assimilated) during his stay abroad. On the other hand, it was undeniable that the person who had been considered the hope of Cuban academic painting was now entering territories of greater creative freedom: “…in spite of this slight servitude, his eagerness to achieve something more personal and more Cuban became evident in several of his canvases.”32

32 Ramón Loy: “Cuadros de Cabrera Moreno, Lina Laboudette y Manuel Villarrubia” (Paintings by Cabrera Moreno, Lina Laboudette and Manuel Villarrubia), p. 3.

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Habana (Havana), 1948 Oil on canvas, 101.2 x 77 cm Museum of the City of Havana collection

In 1949, at the Lyceum too, the change critics had feared took place. In his fifth personal exhibition, the artist disappointed many of his followers with works that clearly were not observing academic canons. Some Cuban architectonic elements appeared, not only as a background or a landscape, but also as reason and identity, and several compositions acquired uncommon dynamism and ease.

The canvas Habana (Havana) is an excellent example.

In it, three women with multi-racial features, in white robes and vivid colored garments, are framed by a large window with a semicircular arch, stained glass, and ironwork typical of our colonial architecture. This is a very Cuban piece in which we notice Cabrera Moreno’s interest in finding an autochthonous and essential signature. The folds of the shawls are perfectly worked, just like the volumes and shadows of the dresses. The young girl in the center, her eyes fixed on the spectator, cannot be less than provocative and attractive, but she still maintains the nostalgic mark of those portrayed by Servando years before. Poses and gestures à la Botticelli show that, despite the transformation that has taken place, there are still traces, especially thematic, of the Academy. We are before a unique appropriation of classic mythology, in which the three Graces have turned into three Havana Creoles.

Retrato de Violeta Casals (Portrait of Violeta Casals, reproduction), 1949 Postcard. Private collection

Georgia, 1948 Oil on canvas, 51 x 39.5 cm MNBA collection

The pleasure of capturing Cuban architecture on canvas was also perceptible in the Retrato de Violeta Casals (Portrait of Violeta Casals), one of the best actresses in Cuban theater in the 1950s, who became especially known for her famous call —“This is Radio Rebelde, from the Sierra Maestra, free territory of Cuba!”— when she was the announcer of that radio station. The artist had placed Violeta in a space with a semicircular arch crowned by stained-glass windows and, in the background, the sea. According to the artist, this was “…a portrait with a special interest in Cuban elements.”33 The young lady’s languid eyes clearly attract us, just like Georgia’s, also portrayed in this exhibition, a girl depicted with a particular tenderness.

Siesta en Santiago (Siesta in Santiago) is a rare painting in Cabrera Moreno’s production, especially because of the presence of a mountainous landscape expanding across the canvas. However, this is not the most moving motif: the sculp46

tural presence of the peasant resting in the foreground of the composition, seen as a monumental figure, seems to obliterate the landscape. This leads us to see the influence of classic Picasso, who, almost thirty years earlier, had also painted beautiful sleeping peasants (Campesinos durmiendo). Undoubtedly, with this siesta, Servando built a unique environment, idyllic and peaceful. Or, according to journalist J. L. Horstman Manrara: “…a delicate, free, and heartfelt achievement in which its author, with a lovely theme, has achieved an effective juxtaposition of originality, beauty and high artistic level.”34 On the other hand, Comparseras (Carnival Dancers) is an admirable example of the dynamism that pervaded the artist’s work at that time, not only due to the mastery with which he captured the frantic movements of the dancers’ costumes, but because of the composition itself, harmoniously wrapped in a circular rhythm. This was the painting that represented Servando in the 1st Salón de Artistas Iberoamericanos held a year later in Madrid.

Undoubtedly, 1949 was the year of the decisive rupture of the artist with the Academy. But this should not be seen as a radical divorce from his initial training because, in practice, the academic mark would be present in a large part of his later production, at times in a surreptitious or almost imperceptible manner, at times evident. Despite the successive transformations Cabrera Moreno’s style experienced throughout his artistic career, the Academy had instilled in him the benefits of work discipline and an indisputable mastery of technique.

PART OF THE TIME BELOVED

Siesta en Santiago (Siesta in Santiago), 1948 Oil on canvas, 56 x 67.5 cm Private collection

Toward the final years of the 1940s, it became clear that Servando could never leave behind his fate: painting would always come first. And painting was not only a way to express himself, but also a way to understand (and therefore, observe and perceive) the world. Thus, color became his eternal accomplice; sensuality, his most poetic and expressive ally.

In 1943, Guy Pérez Cisneros wrote: “There will be no actual national reality as long as we do not focus conscientiously on this panorama, this human type, this transparent atmosphere, this selection of colors, this architectonic form, this legend and this history whose characters we have seen with our own eyes through the eyes of the artist.”35 In this reality, Servando maintained his view, while he concluded an intense part of his precious time and entered into other aspects of his hazardous journey through life and through art.

33 Aldo Menéndez: “Habanera tú. Con Servando Cabrera

Moreno” (Habanera tú. With Servando Cabrera Moreno), p. 35.

34 J. L. Horstman Manrara: “Cabrera Moreno en el Lyceum”

(Cabrera Moreno at the Lyceum), n. p.

35 Roberto Fandiño: Op. cit., p. 25.

Comparseras (Carnival Dancers, reproduction), c. 1948 Postcard. Private collection 47

Capullo (Bud, reproduction), 1945 Oil on canvas, 102.5 x 78.5 cm SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2011

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PART OF THE TIME BELOVED

Retrato de Raquel Lรกzaro de Casagrรกn (Portrait of Raquel Lรกzaro de Casagrรกn), n. d.

Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 76 cm MNBA collection

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Estudio (Nota de color) (Study. Color Note), 1948 Oil on canvas & hardboard, 35 x 32.5 cm MNBA collection

50

PART OF THE TIME BELOVED

Vecina roja (Red Neighbor), 1947 Oil on canvas, 38 x 30.5 cm Private collection

51

I AmforLate the World AN ARTIST AT FULL SPEED…

I

n 1952, Cuban critic Joaquín Texidor noticed in Servando Cabrera’s paintings “…the narration of a recently discovered magic,”36 in reference to the works exhibited at the Galería de Matanzas at the time. Almost sixty years later, Una magia descubierta (A Discovered Magic) was inaugurated in the MBSCM. Besides evoking Texidor’s words in its title, it intended to make public the work carried out by the artist in the 1950s, a period as fertile as unexplored in his career, and a bibliographic heritage limited to a small number of catalogues, articles, perhaps an essay, and a few interviews.

For the artist, this decade would mean not only a period of considerable solo and group exhibitions, and numerous voyages around the world, it was also the time when his most daring and insatiable journeys in art took place. We are now before “another” Servando, one who did not forget his roots, but walked with quick strides and did not stop experimenting when he could not find what he was looking for, or simply, was not satisfied with what he had found.

Strict time boundaries applied to the works of this “lonely walker”37 may be somewhat useless and superficial —even dangerous and excluding— but they are valid because they attempt to approach chronologically one of the most versatile lives in Cuban art. This last thing could become an axiom, because the master was never satisfied with a single style or just one way of doing things, but rather tried out everything within his reach to achieve a style that, as a whole, is mutable and evasive in so far as traditional classifications. To paint and to be true to himself were Servando Cabrera’s two great truths.

He never doubted his fate, although at times, on more than one occasion, he felt insignificant before the findings of his predecessors and of the universal art masters.

36 Joaquín Texidor: Catalogue for the exhibition Cabrera Moreno. Óleos (Cabrera Moreno. Oil Paintings).

37 Graziella Pogolotti: Catalogue for the exhibition Servando Cabrera Moreno: Pinturas y dibujos sobre héroes, jinetes y parejas (Servando Cabrera Moreno: Paintings and Drawings on Heroes, Horsemen, and Couples).

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CLAUDIA GONZÁLEZ MACHADO

Llego tarde para el mundo (I Am Late for the World), 1979 Oil on canvas, 75.3 x 139.6 cm MBSCM collection

53

It would be fitting to remember the artist’s words: “I do not consider any painting or drawing of mine entirely unrelated to former or latter ones. I would say an ‘umbilical cord’ unavoidably joins them. My desire for discovery, my passion for what is human, is transformed through the different phases, but deep down inside I am always very watchful, with an intimate concern for offering my truth.”38 Perhaps because of that sort of “umbilical cord,” this decade began for Servando towards the end of the 1940s, not only because of the change of direction noticed in the pieces of his controversial exhibition held at the Lyceum in 1949 —in which it became more evident that he was leaving behind academic canons—, but also due to his trip to Europe towards the end of that year and, more specifically, to the Grande Chaumière in Paris. This academy, founded in the early years of the 20th century by the Swiss artist Martha Stettler, had been attended by several Cuban artists (Antonio Sánchez Araújo, Domingo Ravenet, Juan José Sicre, Eduardo Abela, Loló Soldevilla, and Amelia ­Peláez, for example). It advocated training far from the strict academic rules of the École des Beaux-Arts, while offering an opening for the emergence of independent art. With these precedents, it is not difficult to deduce the pleasure Servando, a restless and autonomous artist par excellence, felt when he began to study at this institution.

During his stay in Europe, the 26-year-old artist visited various museums in Spain, Italy, Holland, England, Portugal, and Switzerland. Immersed in this journey, his eternal condition as traveler took form and he discovered that “…what had already been painted was so much and so good that he had nothing to do.”39 Cabrera Moreno experienced, as never before, the feeling of having arrived too late to the world of art, and his awe at the oeuvre of the grand masters is nothing but moving. This clearly existential feeling would accompany him throughout his life. Perhaps that was the reason why, two years before his death, he created one of his more lyric canvases, Llego tarde para el mundo (I Am Late for the World – 1979): the limbs of two figures intertwine on an intense blue, as if in an inseparable tangle.

38 José Manuel Otero: “Del premio y su obra habla Servando Cabrera” (Servando Cabrera talks about the Award and His Work”, n. p.

39 Gerardo Mosquera, “Servando Cabrera: toda la pintura” (Servando Cabrera: All the Painting), in Exploraciones de la plástica cubana (Explorations on Cuban Visual Arts), p. 94.

40 It is interesting to see how, throughout his career, Servando used some motifs over and over. Peasants, for example, were one of his favorite topics and he depicted them from his academic period —remember the Peasant with Sugar Cane in 1947— until almost the end of his life and, very specifically, in the ‘70s, when this thematic achieved a higher prominence.

41 J. L. Horstman ­Manrara: Op. cit., n. p.

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When Servando returned to Cuba, his works still bore the mark of the neoclassic Picasso and also of some Cuban artists, like Víctor Manuel, Mariano Rodríguez, Amelia Peláez or Mario Carreño. For example, his oil painting Pareja (Couple), which might have been called “Couples”, because the composition has four human figures, two of them in the background, nude and almost imperceptible. Also, the two peasant lovers40 in the foreground owe much to previous canvases by the artist, like Habana (Havana) or Siesta en Santiago (Siesta in Santiago). The sculptural treatment of the characters, which could also have had its precedent in the Mexican muralist movement, and the contrast between brilliant colors and others much duller are still present. That is why the yellow of the doors and the blue of their frames, in deep contrast with the red of the flower in the girl’s hair or of the peasant’s neckerchief, do not escape the eyes of the viewer. The volumetric and bulky figures seem to take huge proportions in a narrow and small space, intimate and prone to love. There still is a languid look in their eyes, as in the characters Servando depicted in the 1940s. Despite the melancholic and hieratic traits, an almost unavoidable sensuality emerges from the painting, although still offered in a restrained manner.

Along with these works, of clear interest because of their Cuban traits, the artist accomplished some of his most unusual portraits, which seem to evoke his academic training, as well as having an unavoidable surrealist essence. In this sense, his 1949 portrait of actress Maritza Alonso has more than a few points in common with the one Salvador Dalí made of his sister in 1925. In both, the characters are framed by an architectonic scene, wear similar hairdos, their eyes are almond shaped, and there is a nostalgic touch in their gaze.

We also see as surrealist (or “surrealist-like”) the scene that takes place behind the portrayed figure: some characters covered with rippling veils seem to levitate in the space, as if dancing to the beat of a far-off melody. Maritza gives the impression of being distant, with features similar to those of the youth in the Habana (Havana – 1948) canvas. It is as if Servando had consolidated a representational prototype for faces, which was noticed by critics like Horstman, who said: “…as a painting, it is excellent; as a portrait, it lacks identification with the sitter.”41 Maritza’s arms are crossed and her attire, with frills and bows, magnifies her presence. Behind her, a small arcade delineates the space in which the “surreal” scene takes place. Her gaze is still melancholic, a quality Horstman p ­ ointed

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Pareja (Couple), 1950 Oil on canvas, 69 x 56.5 cm MNBA collection

out: “It should be noted that one of C. M.’s characteristics is melancholy. Since his early paintings, we have observed his trend of giving melancholic expressions to his figures […] Does Cabrera Moreno overuse these expressions?”42 Something similar occurs with another 1950 portrait in which Servando portrayed Inocencia, the mother of one of his closest friends, Luis Amado Blanco. As in Maritza Alonso’s portrait, Inocencia is not framed in the typical atmosphere of the author’s previous portraits, but in a landscape branching into what is natural (with a beach that reminds us of his 1948 oil painting, Playa), and what is artificial (the remnants of a stone construction). We have before us a scene where, under a clear light, apparently incompatible elements match (a resource much to the surrealist liking). The lady, represented with much naturalism, is wearing an elegant black outfit and, in her left hand, holds a bouquet that could be a laurel, because of the symbolic association of this plant with immortality and victory.

Inocencia has been placed before the remnants of an old stone building behind which the sand and the blue sea expand into the horizon. The same scene is repeated in the distance, with a rather surrealist reminiscence, as a symbol of the permanence of the lady in the portrait in the memory of her loved ones. Servando incorporated most of the elements and only used the original photograph as a pretext to give free rein to his imagination.

These two portraits, unusual in Cabrera Moreno’s pictorial work, show not only the risk of delineating strict divisions in the phases of his career, but also the way in which the artist traveled dissimilar paths, with the purpose of finding and offering his most intimate “truth.”

Little time elapsed before he distanced himself from this representational prototype and evoked with greater strength the lessons learned in Europe. His artistic sense, always shifting, took another surprising and radical turn: the painter of sweet and melancholic portraits would begin one more of his many “daring voyages”43 in art.

His oil paintings of the late 1940s announced, to a certain extent, a turning point. From then, the artist went back once again to Picasso (his unconscious alter ego?), not to his pink, blue or neoclassic stages, but to cubism, which is “… neither a seed nor a fetus, but an art primarily dealing with forms and, when a form is fulfilled, it is there to live its own life…”44 Servando experimented with transparency to conceive almost abstract figures, solved in a Picassoesque way. Examples of this might be Zonazul (Bluezone) and Verdegris (Greengrey), from 1951. In both of them, he highlighted his work with a range of various colors, announced in the titles themselves, delimited by thick black lines crossing each other and, at the same time, outlining the volumes of some sui generis characters. In his fleeting and geometric figures, cubist Picasso-like 56

strokes may be noticed, as well as the swift movement in some of Duchamp’s ­works, or in Giorgio de Chirico’s mannequins.

Some works of this brief period were shown by Cabrera Moreno in 1951 in a group exhibition at the gallery of the Sociedad Cultural Nuestro Tiempo (Nuestro Tiempo Cultural Society), founded that same year and headed, for a while, by the artist,45 who was identified with the ideas advocated by one of our most daring and renewing cultural institutions before the triumph of the Revolution.

Around that same date, Servando went back to Europe and, after having learned his lessons in cubism, there was a new turning point in his art, brought about by his interest in abstractionism, so greatly in vogue during those years in Europe. Unlike what might have been expected, his main influence was not, as was the case with other Cuban artists of the times, the many trends of abstraction (whether “concrete” or “informalist”), but with Joan Miró’s painting, who, in his words, “is never considered abstract” and “has an impact that moves you.”46 Cabrera Moreno studied the Catalan’s oeuvre in detail and was impressed not so much by the instinctive traits or by the surrealist essence, but by what was strictly formal. This he acknowledged when he said: “Miró, whom I almost traced, gave me the space.”47

Inocencia OPPOSITE PAGE

Untitled [Retrato de Inocencia (Portrait of Inocencia)], 1960 Oil on canvas, 101.5 x 76.3 cm Private collection

42 J. L. Horstman ­Manrara: Op. cit., n. p.

43 Lolo de la Toriente: “Nuevos pintores cubanos: Cabrera Moreno”

(New Cuban Painters: Cabrera Moreno), p. 102 44 Pablo Picasso: “El cubismo” (Cubism), p. 319 45 In Raúl Martínez words: “It was a small gallery where we

exhibited our works. It was run by Servando Cabrera Moreno until he had to go to Europe and I took his place. When he returned, he went back to his former obligations with his usual enthusiasm.” In: Raúl Martínez: Yo Publio. Confesiones (I, Publio. Confessions), p. 284 46 Aquiles, “El domingo de un joven pintor” (Sunday of a Young Painter), n. p.

47 José Eladio: Op. cit., p. 26.

I AM LATE FOR THE WORLD OPPOSITE PAGE

Zonazul (Bluezone), 1951 Oil on canvas 96.5 x 81 cm MNBA collection Verdegris (Greengray), 1951 Oil on canvas 132 x 91.5 cm MNBA collection 59

Thus a new phase in his painting began, with “Mirónian” canvases in which many traces of the Spanish artist can be noticed, especially what had to do with the naiveté of the compositions, the use of various symbols, or the almost always contrasting chromaticity. Human beings, so often depicted by Servando, were absent from his works; they became invisible or camouflaged with deeply oneiric signs. Many of these works were exhibited in Cuba between 1951 and 1953 (at the Lyceum and at the Galería de Matanzas), and in Spain (at the Clan Gallery in Madrid, Galería Caralt in Barcelona, and in Zaragoza, together with those of his friend, the artist Antonio Saura). For Cuban critic Joaquín Texidor, one should read in Servando’s 1952 works: …with clarity the narration of a newly discovered magic. Because of the delicious flavor of the inks, the subtle abundance of forms, the grace and elegance of a drawing, but with the

had, like Piranesi, a new universe. He has shaped the content; he has blown imagination into it.48

In 1953, at the same time the Las Once group was created in Cuba, Servando participated with Antonio Saura and other well known artists (Santiago Lagunas and Carlos Saura, Spaniards; Tony Stubbing, British; Edgar Negret, Colombian; and Jean Lecoultre, Swiss), in the exhibition Tendencias (Trends), held in the Buchholz Gallery in Madrid. That year, accepting again Saura’s invitation, he exhibited his Miró-like works in Arte fantástico (Fantastic Art) at the aforementioned Clan Gallery.

The exhibit included works by other outstanding artists such as the American Alexander Calder and Spaniards Joan Miró, Antonio Tàpies, Modest Cuixart, and Jorge de Oteiza. In his words for the catalogue, Saura expressed:

necessary freedom to answer to the homogeneousness every

In Cabrera Moreno’s paintings, the superimposition of

piece has as a final risk. Servando Cabrera Moreno already

forms, of bones and ectoblastic matter create a thunderous game in which sensuality seems galvanized by a gleaming phosphorescent rhythm. As in some atonal music, this state of disintegration and struggle creates a spatial feeling of infinite sinking into accurate atmospheric cavities.49

Abstracción (Abstraction), c. 1951 Oil on canvas, 89 x 79.5 cm MNBA collection

A year earlier, Servando had taken part in the 26th Venice Biennial, together with some of his most prestigious Cuban colleagues: Amelia Peláez, Felipe Orlando, René Portocarrero, Julio Girona, Víctor Manuel, Roberto Diago, Raúl Milián, Mariano Rodríguez, José Mijares, Cundo Bermúdez, Mario Carreño, Luis Martínez Pedro and Sandú Darié. The last three would fortuitously compose “the trilogy of the first Cuban painters to incorporate abstraction as a means of expression.”50 In that same year, 1952, they founded the magazine Noticias de Arte, which championed the union of artists and architects for the development of comprehensive projects, an idea that greatly influenced Servando’s future works.

In Italy, Cabrera Moreno could not hide his astonishment at discovering that “…the School is on the street. From it, things human move to the galleries and museums. That is why it can be said that Italy has the most vital artistic and cultural development nowadays.” He felt similar admiration for popular and decorative arts, as well as for architecture: “Ceramics, textiles, mosaics, glassware, ornaments, and so on, are also worthy of the highest praise. […] Architecture is at the summit of Europe and the world, and interior design, u ­ tilitarian and beautiful, has the distinctive Italian quality characteristic 48 Joaquín Texidor: Op. cit.

49 Antonio Saura: Catalogue for the exhibition Arte fantástico

(Fantastic Art), held March 1953 at Clan Gallery, Madrid.

50 Elsa Vega: “Otras perspectivas del arte moderno (1951-1963)” (Other Perspectives on Modern Art), p. 157.

51 R. D. Fumagalli Justiniani : Op. cit.

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I AM LATE FOR THE WORLD

Abstracci贸n (Abstraction), 1951 Oil on canvas, 85 x 78.5 cm MNBA collection 61

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Abstracci贸n (Abstraction), 1951 Oil on canvas, 96 x 95 cm MNBA collection 62

Untitled, 1951 Tempera on cardboard, 870 x 560 mm MBSCM collection

Untitled (reproduction), 1953 Oil on canvas, 98 x 63 cm SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2007

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Untitled, 1953 Oil on canvas, 132 x 102 cm Private collection 64

in all of its the elements, because in Italy everything is Italian, and it’s rare to see a foreign influence.”51 What attracted his attention most in this edition of the Biennale, were the pieces by Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and Jean Arp, and especially Paul Klee’s entries, which Servando considered to be very representative and complete.

The Swiss artist Paul Klee would be the next notable influence on his work, and as in the case of Miró, mainly from the formalist aspect. Servando began to make abstractions, not too chromatic, in which that “call for color”52 that impressed Klee so much in the first decade of the 20th century, was not fully noticed. The Cuban artist, enjoyed using subdued shades, mostly ochre and, rarely, striking colors, except in some 1953 canvases, notably Abstracción (Abstraction), in the collection at the MNBA. According to Gerardo Mosquera, to whom we owe one of the most conscientious texts on Servando Cabrera Moreno, this brief period between 1953 and 1954 includes creations that are located “…midway between informalism and geometric abstraction, placed in an intermediate parallel between the two great poles of mid-century abstractionism: the expressive, emotive, ‘lyric’ aspect, and the rational, cold, with a scientific nature.”53 Servando offers us painstaking compositions that reinforce his interest in luminous effects and depth, a form which the Swiss artist had already developed in the early part of the 1900s, with his meticulous exploration of the chromatic scale (including all its transitions and ranges). Klee’s synthetic and essential symbols are present in this period of Servando’s works, but in a rather shy, geometrically calculated way, without the abandon of the Swiss artist. However, to use Klee’s own words, Servando gave rise to an art that “…does not reflect anything visible, but makes it visible”.54 Some of his works from this period were shown in a solo exhibition in 1954 at Galérie La Roue in Paris. The New York Herald Tribune said these were brilliantly colored abstractions, mainly worked with various shades of the same color.

Cabrera Moreno firmly links harmonic areas, building non-figurative forms and barely definable lines that seem to emerge from the background of the painting.55 Despite the fact that the critics applauded his work, this exhibition was to be the beginning of one of the major turning points in his life. As a consequence, his work became as radical as when he took up abstraction. To understand this change more clearly, let the artist explain it:

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ment where commitments and earnings were specified. This was the result of the success of the exhibition. (The contract stipulated that I rent the gallery, pay for the catalogues and the posters. And, if I wanted reviews in the newspapers, each column would have a price. Renting the gallery only entitled me to brief reviews and notes in the press). What the ­marchand sug-

When the Paris exhibition ended, the marchand suggested I

gested would have turned me into a slave, amputating the hu-

paint under contract to the gallery. It was a triumph. It meant

man side of my development and my work. My reaction was

that, for an indefinite time, l would continue to paint in the

final. I left for Spain, the country that had always nourished me,

same style that had enjoyed success, so the gallery could in-

the country I loved the most. What I did there had nothing to

crease its sales through the publication of favorable reviews

do with the Paris experience; it was a reaction. I began to draw

and other means of advertising. It was a commercial agree-

the common people, men and women I saw every day near my

house: the curritos (puppets) vendor, the churros vendor, the

Abstracción (Abstraction), 1953 Oil on canvas, 97 x 195.5 cm MNBA collection

bricklayers, the children…56

His disappointment with art marketing mechanisms attests to Cabrera Moreno’s sincerity and economic disinterest as well as his farsighted instinct as an artist and critic.

In the late 1950s, several scholars noticed a crisis in Cuban abstract art, which was similar to that in academicism some years before. In 1959, Roberto Fandiño reproached “… the interest [of Cuban artists] in foreign markets where abstract artworks are safe and coveted merchandise”.57 Graziella Pogolotti acknowledged, on the same date, the existence of “…an actual crisis in these [abstract] trends, which is evident in a progressive decrease

52 Arte del siglo xx (20 th Century Art), vol. I, p. 116.

53 Gerardo Mosquera: Op. cit., p. 99.

54 Arte del siglo xx (20 th Century Art), quot., p. 116.

55 Kenneth B. Sawyer: “Art and Artists”, n. p.

56 Gerardo Mosquera: Op. cit., pp. 101-102.

57 Roberto Fandiño: Op. cit., p. 24.

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Abstracción (Abstraction), 1954 Oil on canvas, 100.5 x 79.5 cm MNBA collection

La churrera de Madrid (The Madrid Churros Vendor), 1954 Charcoal on cardboard, 955 x 690 mm In Servado Cabrera Moreno. Drawings,

by Gerardo Mosquera

El niño de la alberca (The Water Boy), 1954 Charcoal on paper, 1,000 x 698 mm MNBA collection

of creative strength, and parallel to an ever-increasing virtuosity […]. New outlets are being tried: not a return to the academy, rather against the academicism of many abstract painters.”58 With an admirable lucidity, Servando suspected the beginnings of this crisis as early as 1954, when, in Havana, the “Anti-Biennial” was being held. It was named thus because its participants were against exhibiting in the Second Spanish American Art Biennial, sponsored by the governments of Cuba and Spain (that is, by the dictatorships of Fulgencio Batista and Francisco Franco, respectively).

In a drastic reversal, Cabrera Moreno gave up abstraction and his work experienced an unprecedented opening towards human figures. He would no longer focus on placid, tender and melancholic characters, as in his works in the final years of the

1940s and the early 1950s, but with people immersed in their daily lives, often sad and difficult. To accentuate this sensation, at times Servando used charcoal, which allowed him to emphasize a roughness of strokes and depict in his works a strong, almost “raw” realism. This is the line he followed in his 1954 canvases with Hombre con una horca (Man with a Pitchfork) and Vendedor de curritos (Puppet Vendor), where attention is drawn to his treatment of volume. The figures are endowed with an impressive sculptural monumentality, as can be seen in one of his best paintings of this period, La churrera de Madrid (The Madrid Churros Vendor). In these drawings, Servando once again shows 58 Graziella Pogolotti: Experiencia de la crítica (Experience of Criticism), pp. 20-21.

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Hombre con una horca (Man with a Pitchfork), 1954 Charcoal on paper, 640 x 481 mm MNBA collection 70

Vendedor de curritos (Puppet Vendor), 1954 Charcoal on paper, 965 x 688 mm MNBA collection

71 I AM LATE FOR THE WORLD

Cheo Lazo, carbon burner in the Zapata Swamp, one of the characters in the film El Mégano, who served as a model for Servando

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Cheo, carbonero poeta (Cheo, Charcoal burner/poet), 1954 Charcoal on paper, 980 x 670 mm Private collection Los niños de Trinidad (Children from Trinidad, reproduction), 1954 Charcoal on cardboard, 1,000 x 710 mm Servando Cabrera Moreno. Drawings, by Gerardo Mosquera

the influence of P ­ icasso, and other Spanish painters like Murillo, Zurbarán, and Goya. More importantly: traits of what will later be his epic period are already perceptible.

Focused now on social themes, the artist returned to Cuba and continued the series with drawings like Los niños de Trinidad (Children from Trinidad), in which we see evidence of his interest in depicting ethnic traits, already developed early in his career. Later he was invited to participate in the shooting of the documentary film El Mégano, one of the most important precursors of Cuban filmmaking and of the movement of the New Latin American Cinema. It was made by Julio García Espinosa, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, and a group of young cineastes from the Sociedad Cultural Nuestro Tiempo. Previously, while still in Paris, Servando, together with Eduardo Manet, Vicente Revuelta, Julio García Espinosa, and other intellectuals with whom he shared a deep friendship, had signed a manifesto for the production of this film.

59 Gerardo Mosquera: Op. cit., p. 104.

60 Roberto Fandiño: Op. cit., p. 17.

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During the shooting, Servando Cabrera made numerous charcoal drawings recreating with vigorous and rough strokes the lives of charcoal burners, in keeping with their reality.

In his words: “I was able to see how charcoal burners lived. I went with them in their crude boats. I saw them work. I heard a man called Cheo playing his tres. I saw how the folk art I had admired so much in other countries existed there in a most unpretentious way: a tablecloth was made from a newspaper cut with scissors. I ate on it together with those men.”59 From this experience, an oil painting was also born: Los carboneros de El Mégano (The Charcoal Burners from El Mégano – 1955), a remarkable canvas in Cuban art of the times. Servando infused in it a masterful social theme, far from the abstraction that was flooding our art. The characters look weather-beaten because of their hard work, but the artist has granted them monumentality and grandeur emphasizing the contrast with their plight. It bequeathed to Cuban art a painting with magnificent fluidity and deep visual strength.

Shortly thereafter, the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) entered the artist’s studio and questioned the significance of these drawings, perceiving a potential danger for their interests.

They threatened Cabrera Moreno and demanded that he abandon the style, “that form which upsets them so much.”60 The

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Carboneros (Charcoal Burners), 1954 Charcoal on paper, 980 x 670 mm Private collection

copies and the original of El Mégano had already been seized and Antonio Núñez Jiménez’ book on Cuban geography had been destroyed.

These works by Servando, with a clear realist and, in some cases, expressionist slant (as can be seen in some of the drawings he made in Spain) would soon give way to a different poetics, although they did not entirely disappear. Between 1955 and 1956, he traveled around Europe, where he visited numerous museums and took an interest in folk art. This was also the case in Mexico and several countries in Central America he visited at the time. This journeying, with an inherent educa-

Los carboneros de El Mégano (The Charcoal Burners from El Mégano), 1955 Oil on canvas, 65 x 94 cm Private collection

tional and artistic essence, reinforced in him a vocation he could never do without: collecting. In the land of the great muralists —we should remember that Diego Rivera also developed an extraordinary passion for collecting—,61 folk art and

61 As years went by, Servando accumulated a considerable

collection of folk art to the point that the walls in his house were crammed with hundreds of objects from dissimilar places. Diego Rivera had collected more than fifty thousand pre-Columbian art pieces, which would later become part of the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Museum collection.

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Retrato de Begoña (Portrait of Begoña), 1955 Oil on canvas, 75 x 53 cm Private collection

traditional “fabrications” made a deep impression on him. He brought to Cuba some beautiful examples that started his neat and exquisite collection of folk art, which is considered one of the best in the country.

At this point Cabrera Moreno made a turn precisely to folk art, discovering a new element for his painting. He created a large number of works similar to geometrical abstractions that evidence a conscious interest in capturing traits of Cuban colonial architecture. Unlike his works dating from the late 1940s (in which elements of ironwork, stained glass windows, and transoms are frequently in the background of his compositions), those in this phase were purely ornamental, with brightly colored stylized motifs that created an interesting fusion between the figures and the background. As a result, folk art was no longer a mere support; it became a thematic axis.

In this sense, we cannot ignore Servando’s friendly relations with many architects, such as Salvador Fernández, Raúl Oliva, and Fernando Pérez O’Reilly, who also motivated him to make several designs for stained-glass windows and mosaics for Cuban residences.

Retrato de Begoña (Portrait of Begoña – 1955) is the best example of the transition from one poetics to another.

The desire to achieve a realistic representation, on the one hand, and the will to incorporate elements of Cuban architectonic universe, on the other, remain. Lineal synthesis dominates this beautiful oil painting in such a way that there is an organic integration of the girl with the stained-glass windows, wrought-iron divisions, and arches Servando had placed, with a rather “conscious oversight” in the composition. Interest does not focus on the comparison of chromatic ranges —the painting is virtually monochromatic—, but on the formal aspect and a delicate treatment of the lines. The painstaking simplicity in Begoña’s attire, her hair from which spirals emerge and blend with the background, and the intense look in her eyes, express a unique beauty, and once again demonstrate the author’s mastery of portraiture.

Oil paintings like Fachada (Façade) and El Lecho (The Bed) are from this same date. Cabrera Moreno emphasizes the contrast between warm and cool tones on a canvas where black lines take center stage to structure geometrizing compositions and some vegetable elements, as well as to fix the boundaries of the various color areas. However, architectonic motifs reach their utmost splendor in Fachada. The canvas is covered almost

Fachada (Façade), 1955 Oil on canvas, 101 x 61.5 cm MNBA collection

entirely with arabesques, rhombuses or straight and zigzagging lineal strokes, delineated by thick black lines that, in turn, demarcate brilliant colors contrasted with more subdued ones. It is, therefore, a poetics with an undisputable baroque, ornamental, and colorist essence, very much in keeping with what Amelia Peláez was doing during those years.

With the passing of time, this profusion of architectonic elements gave way to less crowded depictions where it is possible to perceive figures on a generally black background, in which some anthropomorphic characters can be recognized in their still geometrizing structures, at times, with a clear cubist influence. The painting Origen (Origin – 1956), for example, shows the author’s interest in achieving a purer composition, 77

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El lecho (The bed), 1955 Oil on canvas, 82 x 121 cm MNBA collection

Origen (Origin), 1956 Oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm Private collection

as well as his desire to continue working with strong lineal strokes not only black, but also of lively colors, in this case yellow and orange. Undoubtedly, Teatro Estudio’s emblem (also made in 1956) is one of the best examples of this stylistic synthesis. According to Servando: …I conceived the emblem […], which the members of the group needed. The symbol is still galloping, like the horse with its rider, mime-like.

Within my creative work as a painter, I immediately understood the necessity of this emblem which was designed with quick, happy team work, as were all the group’s projects. I was pleased

In keeping with the above, it is worth highlighting the friendships Servando had developed with many playwrights, set designers, and actors.

Among them were the brother and sister Vicente and Raquel Revuelta, from Teatro Estudio, a group with which he collaborated more than once illustrating numerous programs such as The Good Woman of Szechwan and The Glass Menagerie, and the covers of Prometeo, a magazine on theater.

Teatro Estudio logo

with the idea, which sprang from the group, and I made the drawing with much love. Its creation was part of the style in which I was working in those days, pure lines, the synthesis of some elements and of drawings that preceded paintings like La bella durmiente (Sleeping Beauty) or Tierra adentro (Inland).62

62 Maida Royero: “20 años de Teatro Estudio” (Twenty years

of Teatro Estudio), interview with the founders of this company, pp. 62-63.

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Vignette for the program cover for Glass Menagerie, staged by the Teatro Estudio in January 1961 OPPOSITE PAGE

Retrato de Vicente Revuelta (Portrait of Vicente Revuelta), n. d.

Tempera on canvas, 61 x 47 cm MNBA collection

Vignettes by Servando for Prometeo. Revista de Divulgaci贸n Teatral magazine 80

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Some of the results of this poetics were exhibited in 1956 at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, with good reviews from critics and public alike. The titles of some of the pieces do not hide their close connection with architecture, with ornamentation (Façade, Interior, Tableau, Lattice…) or with human beings (Body, Character, Face…). On the motifs in these works, the artist would say: “…the Atlantic, the flora, the fauna, the architecture, the human quality above all, ply their shapes with fluid definition.”63 A year later, the artist was still firmly entrenched in this style. He made numerous drawings in which the ornamental baroque merged with sui géneris characters, as in Carnaval (Carnival), ­Figura (Figure), and Las damas de Buenavista (The Ladies from Buenavista), from 1957, all in the collections of the MNBA. This was also the case of two untitled pieces with the same date (in the collection of the MBSCM), or in silkscreen pieces made that year to give atmosphere to the Havana Hilton Hotel (today Habana Libre), a project in which Amelia Peláez, René Portocarrero, Cundo Bermúdez, Marta Arjona, and Mario Carreño also took part.

Untitled, 1957 Tempera on cardboard, 760 x 550 mm MBSCM collection

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Carnaval (Carnival), 1957 Tempera on paper, 740 x 590 mm MNBA collection

63 R. D. Fumagalli Justiniani: Op. cit., n. p.

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Untitled, 1957 Silkscreen, 593 x 745 mm MBSCM collection

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Las damas de Buenavista (The Ladies from Buenavista), 1957 Oil on canvas, 105 x 125 cm MNBA collection

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Untitled, 1957 Silkscreen, 1,000 x 720 mm Private collection

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Untitled, 1958 Tempera on cardboard, 750 x 1,010 mm ICAIC collection

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Mujer con pez (Woman with Fish), 1958 Tempera on cardboard, 990 x 645 mm Private collection Untitled, 1958 Tempera on cardboard, 505 x 373 mm MBSCM collection

This poetics would continue in 1958, with Mujer con pez (Woman with Fish), in which figures are much more recognizable; or in an untitled work in ICAIC collection where Servando used his thick black lines to delimitate the areas of flat and contrasting colors, as well as in an untitled drawing in the Cabrera Moreno museum collection, in which there is a h ­ uman couple, now fully identifiable, on a geometric background with elements of Cuban architecture.

Undoubtedly, it was not easy for an artist like Cabrera Moreno to avoid the human presence in his work. No matter how much he approached abstraction, he always returned to this “passion for what is human” which fascinated him from the beginning and remained throughout his successful career. From 1959 on, after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the human figure, splendid, is again the protagonist of his painting.

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Figura (Figure), c. 1957 Tempera & ink on cardboard, 550 x 398 mm MNBA collection 90

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Mujer en la ventana (Woman at the Window), n. d.

Tempera & ink on cardboard, 538 x 449 mm MNBA collection 91

Figura con paloma (Figure with Dove), 1959 Tempera & ink on flat board, 350 x 260 mm MNBA collection

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Navidades cubanas (Cuban Christmas), 1959 Ink & tempera on cardboard, 390 x 365 mm Private collection

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Mujer y caballo (Woman and Horse), 1959 Ink on paper, 731 x 838 mm MNBA collection

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Dos figuras (Two Figures), 1959 Ink on paper, 600 x 770 mm MNBA collection 95

Amalia (reproduction), 1959 Mixed on cardboard, 585 x 370 mm SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2009

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Mujer ante la ventana (Woman at the Window), 1959 Ink on paper, 352 x 278 mm MNBA collection

Figura (Figure), 1959 Tempera & ink on flat board, 450 x 345 mm MNBA collection 98

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Untitled, 1959 Tempera on cardboard, 570 x 350 mm Private collection 99

Gradually, Servando began to pay less attention to baroque ornamentation with Cuban forms, which are still evident in Figura con paloma (Figure with Dove), or in the illustration of the cover of the record album Villancicos cubanos (Cuban Carols) by the Madrigalistas de La Habana chorus. He devoted time to compositions with a great dynamism, many of which are excellent ink drawings —like Mujer y caballo (Woman and Horse) or Dos figuras (Two Figures)—, which reveal the play of shadow and volume, using thin black lines that structure abundant organic elements, or human and zoomorphic figures, with angular strokes and a reminiscence of Wifredo Lam and of the characters Luis Martínez Pedro had developed in his works during the 1940s.

These motifs can also be found in the original female nudes he made between 1959 and 1960, in which he explored chromatic contrast between figure and background, and made use of the black lines he frequently resorted to when building stylized characters, with an outstanding cubist influence, at times intermingled with floral and other organic elements.

We can appreciate the synthesis of an expressive poetics in the portrait of Servando’s mother, made in 1960. We find in the face the survival of the naturalist composition; in the clothing, certain cubist traits, and in the background, a baroque structuring (a semicircular arch decorated with plants).

This piece may be considered a work of synthesis and, in a way, the closure of a period or of a style, since the three elements that can be found in Servando’s painting during the second half of the ‘50s: naturalism, cubism, and baroque, coexist harmoniously.

In 1959 Servando was once again interested in working with various tones of the same shade, in pieces revealing great movement, like Patio abierto (Open Patio) and Los héroes bajo el sol (Heroes Under the Sun), in which the monumentality of the figures stands out because of the geometrizing volume of the forms. The undeniable dynamism of these canvases, a direct consequence of the author’s joy over the success of the revolution, brought admirable results to his 1960 output. In this sense, the oil painting El combate (The Combat) is an excellent example and shows the formal and thematic transformation in Cabrera Moreno’s art in the early ‘60s, which will reach its highest expression in his subsequent (and soon to come) epic style. In El combate, we face a jumble of limbs twisting and crushing each other at a shuddering and tense pace. Characters are placed in a violent atmosphere with brilliant tonalities countering cold and dark colors. At times we think we are catching sight of a human face, a waving arm, a twisted leg; at others, we believe we are seeing the trunk of a palm, a lizard’s skin, or the green leaves of a tree. We are before a war cry: everything trembles and shudders. It is a Servando consternated by his most immediate reality; an artist who, more than describing a given historical event, offers his interpretation, his truth, of a specific situation, without leaving behind his “passion for what is human.”

Pieces like El combate announce the beginning of a new style in Cabrera Moreno’s painting. From then on, his work expanded towards the search for a wider social implementation whose precedents go back to the drawings made in Spain or in the film El Mégano in the mid-fifties. In future works we would recognize, at times, children like those in Trinidad; strong bodies of the charcoal burners in 1955; the weather-beaten complexion of the poet Cheo; or the sublime grace of Begoña. We are then witnesses of this “umbilical cord” which Servando intertwined for himself and for the world, with a body of work that, far from being late, arrives early and forever.

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Untitled [Portrait of Servando’s Mother], 1960 Oil on canvas, 92 x 59 cm MBSCM collection 100

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Los hĂŠroes bajo el sol (Heroes Under the Sun), 1959 Oil on canvas, 74 x 104.5 cm MNBA collection 103

Patio abierto (Open Patio), 1959 Oil on canvas, 89 x 99.5 cm Private collection

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El combate (The Combat), 1960 Oil on canvas, 115 x 100 cm Museum of the City of Havana collection

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Cuando el aire tiembla (When Air Trembles), 1981 Oil on canvas, 80 x 180.5 cm MBSCM collection

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Trembles

ROSEMARY RODRÍGUEZ CRUZ64

P

ostmodern literary license would have allowed me to begin this text with a statement made by many of our interviewees or by many people with whom we simply spoke: “I met Servando…”, but the date of his death and my young age would reveal the absurdity of that expression. However, through substantial reports on travels, articles in journals, letters, postcards to relatives, texts in catalogues, a few essays, among them the canonical one

by Gerardo Mosquera: “Servando Cabrera Moreno: toda la pintura”, and valuable documents I consulted, I feel I have met him, at least a little.

A generous smile, always ready to help, to share his magic, his musical tastes, his few free hours with others, a two-faceted Gemini, affable, with a great sense of humor, sound in his decisions, and with an accurate hand: that is how I recognize the master. That is how I imagine him.

After five years of studying the collection he decided to keep for himself, which is now accessible to us all, I have been begun to understand why he was admired as a person and a teacher by so many, and why his art rose to its peak with the birth his erotic themes.

I will attempt to write devoid of prejudice in order to achieve a comprehensive evaluation, weighing successes and mistakes, actions and intentions, consensus and contradictions latent in a wealth of valuable opinions, almost always voiced and defended from the immediacy of the seven exhibitions Servando held between 1960 and 1969.65 A distinguishing trait will be the critical distance that must be interjected into what was put forth more than thirty years ago. However, in the following paragraphs, there will be a significant number of quotes by those who shared an enjoyable conversation on the terrace of his home on 68th street,66 visited his exhibitions, or, simply, were moved by his art.

The 1960s (in Cuba the decade began in 1959) required a radical change in Servando’s artistic output . After a long and decisive period in which his talent as a painter became clear, as well as his skill at drawing and his command of color, he began a cycle that abruptly broke with abstraction; he developed a militant, documentary style: a radical change, appreciated and criticized.

Cabrera Moreno was a man of culture, knowledgeable in history and sensitive to it. In 1959, together with the changes undertaken in the country beginning on January 1st, he decided not to paint the undisputable leaders of the Revolution, but to penetrate the anonymity of the hundreds of people who took part in the liberating feat. In Milicias campesinas (Peasant Militias – 1961), an emblematic painting where privilege is diluted, everyone, without exception, was part of a historic moment. He paints Latin Americans and Cubans with symbols of their own: masses of sinewy men holding machetes, honorable and confident.

64 Graduate in Art History, museologist since 2007, curator of the

exhibition La conciencia del testigo (The Conscience of the Witness) and co-curator of Todos los recuerdos de Sevilla (All the Memories from Seville). She was named deputy director of the MBSCM in 2012.

65 Two of these exhibitions traveled to six Cuban cities and the same number of then socialist countries in Eastern Europe.

66 Servando lived on Calle 68 between 17 and 19 streets, Playa

Municipality, Havana.

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Milicias campesinas (Peasant Militias), 1961 Oil on canvas, 140.5 x 201 cm MNBA collection

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Playa Girón, 1961 Oil on canvas, 72 x 130.5 cm Private collection

From the perspective of a historian, I would dare say that he was the first artist to take on the revolutionary epic.

Paraphrasing Félix Pita Rodríguez, he followed the shortest and most secure path to the future while thoroughly studying the present moment.67 His first exposition of the decade brought together his paintings dealing with the themes that had caught national and international attention and even the number of the works shown, 26, had a symbolic nature. In the scenes and moments of Cuban transformations, there is a perfect merger of man with his country, a metaphorical overlapping of figure and background, as a heroic poetic song.

However harsh these words may seem, in those years in Cuba, and in Servando’s art, the air was trembling with new currents. Various events demanded a coherent work.

By 1961, revolutionary history had already taken place which could be studied, documented, and illustrated, without great pretensions, through Servando’s canvases shown in his first solo exhibition at the MNBA. If we look at each of the works in this exhibition, it is impossible not to feel the energy of those days. We also notice the will to avoid gender discrimination, the evident defense of the presence and prominence of women in 110

oil paintings and gouaches like Tomatera (Tomato Picker), Miliciana (Militia Girl), and Milicianas (Militia Girls).

Dramatic and powerful events are also reflected in the canvases Bombardeo del 15 de abril (April 15th Bombing) and Playa Girón, both from 1961. In the latter, men are ready, taking up their rifles while a dramatic and bloody veil highlights the violence of the events. Shaken by a grotesque storm,68 the bodies are laid out, dying, in the center of the composition. Others arrive to help those in need. Martyrdom, despair, muffled cries…

In Bombardeo del 15 de abril (1961), terror and uncertainty are read in the heartrending eyes of a man or of a mother clinging to her son Guernica-like, looking at the sky, waiting for death. Cabrera Moreno goes beyond what is anecdotal to

67 Félix Pita Rodríguez: “Cabrera Moreno, artista de su tiempo” (Cabrera Moreno, an Artist of his Times).

68 Five years later, “expressive grotesque” will occupy his art.

69 Title of an article by Manuel Díaz Martínez published in Artes

Plásticas magazine in January 1961.

Bombardeo del 15 de abril (April 15th Bombing), 1961 Oil on canvas, 72 x 131 cm MNBA collection

Declaración de La Habana (Havana Declaration), 1960 Ink on paper, 560 x 760 mm MNBA collection

become a pictorial documentary maker of the 1960s. His art inescapably answers the guidelines and politics drawn in the midst of revolutionary fervor.

In Declaración de La Habana (Havana Declaration – 1961), Cubans, and Servando himself, —why not?— seem to be enjoying the calm and raise their hands to approve the reforms that promote well-being for all. The genesis of the first period of his epic painting found expression in “Personalities of the Revolution”69 at the aforementioned exhibition.

Radically involved in the new educational and cultural projects, in September 1962, Cabrera Moreno joined the faculty of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Cubanacán (Cubanacan Visual Arts School) together with Fayad Jamís, Adigio Benítez, Orlando Yanes and ­ others.

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El asesinato del brigadista y el campesino (Assasination of the Militant and the Peasant), 1962 Oil on canvas, 100 x 82 cm Private collection

Territorio (Territory), 1963 Oil on canvas, 125 x 189 cm MNBA collection

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Barrenderas (Street Sweepers), 1962 Ink on cardboard, 300 x 410 mm MBSCM collection Vendedoras de flores (Flower Vendors), 1962 Ink on cardboard, 300 x 415 mm MBSCM collection

Soldados en Sofía (Soldiers in Sofia), 1962 Ink on cardboard, 412 x 300 mm MBSCM collection

Months before, new ­professional c­hallenges demanded his presence abroad. That same year, he traveled to the socialist countries with a Cuban art exhibition together with Raúl Oliva and Graziella Pogolotti. She said that during the tour through Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania,70 when they saw each other every morning at breakfast, Servando had been up for some time walking the streets and actively observing the people and their habits. “In the midst of the commitments we had, he always found time to sketch, to the point that he brought back an excellent collection of drawings from that trip.”71 Thanks to the possibilities offered by fantasy, let us imagine this skillful artist enjoying, as no one else, the people and daily activities in each city he visited. Servando takes us by the hand on his pilgrimage, visited at dawn when faces are barely distinguishable, or at sunrise when countenances begin to change. Apuntes de un viaje72 (Notes from a Trip) is a testimony to the mastery of his art.

Soldados en Sofía (Soldiers in Sofia), Barrenderas (Street Sweepers), Vendedoras de flores (Flower Vendors), ordinary people, appear in the 34 small drawings (they do not exceed 300 x 420 mm) of enormous value. Some of them are housed in the museum that today exhibits and preserves his legacy. The scanty and continuous lines of these pen-and-ink drawings stand out before our eyes, together with the author’s signature and the place where they were made.

The seeds of Servando’s epic period are found no sooner than 1954, in his drawings and in just one oil painting:

Los carboneros de El Mégano (The Charcoal Burners from El Mégano). In it, men wearing yarey hats show the same readiness to attack as the militiamen he would later paint. Forerunners of these drawings were from his year in Spain, where, for the first time, he turns humans into the protagonists of an era.

70 These political-cultural missions also allowed him to enter into contact with Cubans studying in these far away lands.

71 Julieta García Ríos: “Servando, un paseante solitario” (Servando,

a lonely walker – interview with Graziella Pogolotti), p. 4.

72 The title of a 1965 exhibition by Servando in which he showed various moments from his tour through the socialist countries in Eastern Europe.

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El fruto (Fruit), 1964 Oil on canvas, 85 x 130 cm MNBA collection 117

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Jardín (Garden), 1963 Oil on canvas, 197.5 x 119 cm Cuban Council of State collection

El Día de la Victoria (Victory Day), 1963 Oil on canvas, 117 x 84 cm Private collection

73 The name Gerardo Mosquera gave to this period of Servando’s work. In: “Servando Cabrera Moreno: toda la pintura” (Servando Cabrera Moreno: All the Painting), p. 123.

74 Graziella Pogolotti: Catalogue for the exhibition Servando Cabrera Moreno. Pinturas y dibujos sobre héroes, jinetes y parejas (Servando Cabrera Moreno. Paintings and Drawings of Heros, Horsemen and Couples).

75 Lolo de la Torriente: “Exposición de Servando Cabrera Moreno”

(Servando Cabrera Moreno Exhibition), p. 151.

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“The epic calm”73 that began in 1963 reflects a feeling of being very close to society and related to it. People are more trusting and enjoy the serenity and justice promised to them. In canvases like El Día de la Victoria (Victory Day – 1963) or Jardín (Garden – 1963), men and women live in harmony. The militia is not fighting and its members have been crowned as true heroes.

The second creative epic period came to an end in 1964. In the exhibition Servando Cabrera Moreno. Pinturas y dibujos sobre héroes, jinetes y parejas (Servando Cabrera Moreno. Paintings and Drawings on Heroes, Horsemen and Couples), the drastic way in which he opposed the themes he had dealt with before January 1st, 1959, became evident. Graziella Pogolotti, close to the artist and sensitive to the reflection of the Cuban scene in her friend’s colossal pictorial presentations, wrote on his works in the catalogue of the exhibition held in Galería de La Habana: “…They are an outline and a point of departure towards a complex new elaboration of data full of meaning, although arbitrarily taken from reality, from which the painter acts with full freedom.”74 With the same vigorous tone and perfect rhythm in the lines, he composed a monumental body of work against a similar background. “With his greens and blues, his mauves and violets, his reds and blacks, and an economy of yellow, Servando is able to express a new world before him.”75 It should be observed that, a decade before, the color range that would characterize his art had already been defined.

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Untitled [Macheteros], 1964 Ink on cardboard, 537 x 1,216 mm MBSCM collection

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Rebeldes (Rebels), 1964 Ink on paper, 500 x 650 mm MNBA collection

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Y sucedió en mi tiempo (And It Happened in My Time), 1979 Oil on canvas, 150 x 120.3 cm Museum of the City of Havana collection

Tiempo joven (Youthful Time), 1970 Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 153 cm MNBA collection

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In one of the interviews given by the Cuban artist when the epic period was coming to an end, he expressed his appreciation to the Revolution for the opportunity to develop artistically. He pointed out: “…with the eye and the heart wide open to our reality, in the future we will be able to create paintings for our revolutionary Cuba.”76 The events of the Revolution took up most of Servando’s art from 1960 to 1964. This period, unlike others, was not contaminated with former trends and ways of doing things. A decade later, he went back to creating large canvases like Tiempo joven (Youthful Time – 1970), Y sucedió en mi tiempo (And It Happened in My Time – 1979) and Los plenos poderes (Complete Power – 1973). He confirmed: “For over thirty years I have accumulated an art and a form of life integrated with the people, art, and history of Cuba. I expect to continue working on this for at least 37 more years…”77 1965 was a decisive year. On the one hand, a trip to Paris allowed him to get to know Willem de Kooning’s work and absorb it, so as to develop an art different from the one for which he was recognized and, on the other, the unspeakable action of being dismissed from the staff of ENA. Because of those “ideological” conflicts, as in the case of Antonia Eiriz, his friend and confidant,78 one of his great passions, teaching, in addition to painting and collecting, was denied him. Had Servando and Antonia seen hawks where everyone else saw doves?79 In those times, the most daring, brilliant, and provoc-

Los plenos poderes (Complete Power), 1973 Oil on canvas, 155.5 x 200 cm Cuban Council of State collection

76 «Servando Cabrera Moreno», p. 14.

77 Postcard sent from Spain to his family in 1980. It belongs to the

MBSCM documents collection.

ative artists, the ones with vision, were condemned to being ostracized.

Life brought about the meeting, communion, and happy understanding of these people. For Servando, Antonia was much more than a colleague; for her, he was a missing link. The influence Antonia and Servando had on other artists, whether students or not, is undisputable.

Daring young artists like Luis Miguel Valdés, Manuel López Oliva, Nelson Domínguez, René Negrín, Ever Fonseca, Gilberto Frometa, Enrique Martínez, Tomás Sánchez, Ernesto García Peña, Eduardo Roca (Choco), José Villa, Alejandro

78 In January 1973, Servando related in a letter to Evidio Perdomo how Eiriz was subtly discharged from the National School of Art (ENA): “Antonia has not returned to school because they won’t give her transportation.” The artist lived in Juanelo, San Miguel del Padrón, and the effects of polio in one of her legs made walking difficult for her.

79 We are paraphrasing Antonio Eligio Fernandez Rodríguez (Tonel), who in the article “Antonia Eiriz en la pintura cubana” (Antonia Eiriz in Cuban Painting), wrote: “Some, perhaps without even noticing it, extremely toned down the image of that reality: they saw only doves where buzzards, hawks, owls were also to be found…”

80 Other names may be added to this list, like that of Carlos Alfonso, who had been a fellow student with Servando in the San Alejandro School and was an assiduous visitor.

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FLAVIO GARCIANDÍA Nada personal (Nothing Personal), 1977 Oil on canvas, 100 x 160 cm MNBA collection

­ ontesinos, Rogelio López Marín (Gory), Flavio Garciandía, M José Bedia, Rafael Paneca, Raimundo Orozco, and Jorge Braulio80 visited the master in his home, although it was forbidden, and tried to turn their meetings into intense learning sessions. Flavio Garciandía said that Cabrera Moreno was jealous of his piece Nada personal (Nothing Personal – 1977), thanks to which we today have in our collection the only portrait made to Servando when alive.

81 Antonio Saura: “Notas sobre la pintura de Cabrera Moreno” (Notes on the painting of Cabrera Moreno). Catalogue for Exposición Cabrera Moreno, pinturas y dibujos/1966 (Cabrera Moreno Exhibit: Paintings and Drawings).

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Until 1969, Servando Cabrera made use of expressionism to convey “…the complexity of the human condition, the need for offering a new image of man immersed in world of contradictions.”81 The 1965-1969 paintings, excellent and distinctive, speak to a diverse semantic dimension. This neo-expressionism, apart from being a vehicle or a path for the consolidation of what would distinguish him as an artist, would be a period for channeling reflections.

A more violent and impulsive man is revealed in the large bodies in Molote (Riot – 1966). Heads and torsos were part of a whole that was never drawn. Faces snatched from disfigured bodies. Kisses simulate wounding bites pointing to a horrific ending in which blood will flow. In a comparison that might serve as an example, between Beso (Kiss – 1968) and Beso 5 (Kiss 5 – 1966), we can see how the canvases are often more caustic than the excellent studies.

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FLAVIO GARCIANDÍA Untitled, c. 1978 Oil on canvas, 105 x 91 cm MBSCM collection 125

Molote (Riot), 1966 Oil on canvas, 171 x 352 cm MNBA collection 126

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Beso 5 (Kiss 5, reproduction), 1966 Oil on canvas, 86.7 x 83 cm SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2011

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Beso II (Kiss II), 1966 Oil on canvas, 138.5 x 72 cm MNBA collection

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Beso (Kiss), 1968 Ink on cardboard, 507 x 764 mm MNBA collection

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Beso (Kiss), 1968 Tempera on canvas, 77 x 102 cm MNBA collection

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La entrada (The Entrance), 1966 Oil on canvas, 140 x 268 cm MNBA collection

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Cuestionario (Questionnaire), 1967 Oil on canvas, 150.5 x 180 cm UNEAC collection

Servando was able to vehemently manipulate his palette. In this cycle, forms show nuances that would not reappear later. He reinforced his uninhibited images with vigorous, emphatic, and marked brush strokes, and stripped the figure from its context to stand alone. More than fragmenting, he mutilated, forced, accumulated… He also conceived a group of works similar to those exhibited by the Dutch painter De Kooning in 1953, under the title of Woman. Faces were not revealed and feminine attributes especially the buttocks were emphasized and exaggerated, as in De Kooning’s Willendorf Venus, we do not know if with a similar sense of fertility. The body was exceeded and accentuated against the primary colors in the background. La favorita (The Favorite) and Estela (1969) are clear examples.

In the human columns, kisses, women, riots, bodies…

Cabrera Moreno makes individual contradictions evident. In this brief space within his extensive flow of creativity, he speaks to us about relationships, corners, unexpressive moments, heartbreaking conflicts.

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Shortly before the end of the decade, he made large ink drawings in which the transition to his later themes is already noticeable. Pubes or large reproductive organs occupy large spaces on the canvases. Many of these drawings simulate an interweaving with natural elements, fruit, or phytomorphic figures, some so similar and ambiguous they might be applied to any body without distinction of sex.

In spite of misunderstandings, the 1960s ended with happy news for Servando and those who loved him: Flor de carne (Flower of Flesh – 1969) received the first mention at the VIII Premio Internacional de Dibujo Joan Miró (8th Joan Miró International Prize for Drawing). He was the first Cuban to receive an award in that competition.82 OPPOSITE PAGE

Estela, 1969 Oil on canvas, 95 x 70 cm Private collection

82 The painting, sent at the suggestion of his friend Margarita Ruiz, is in the permanent collection of Contemporary Art at MNBA. In 1980, another Cuban artist, Tomás Sánchez (1948) won the award.

135 WHEN AIR TREMBLES

Columna humana (Human Column), 1965 Oil on canvas, 240 x 135.5 cm MNBA collection

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Columna humana No. 7 (Human Column No. 7), 1966 Oil on canvas, 114.5 x 87.5 cm MBSCM collection 136

Untitled, 1965 Ink on paper, 502 x 760 mm Private collection

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Personaje II (Persona II), 1965 Oil on canvas, 144 x 113 cm MNBA collection 138

Untitled, 1971 Ink on cardboard, 430 x 350 mm MBSCM collection

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WHEN AIR TREMBLES

Untitled, 1969 Oil on hardboard, 915 x 1,205 mm MNBA collection

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Untitled, 1969 Ink on cardboard, 730 x 505 mm Private collection 142

WHEN AIR TREMBLES

Flor de carne (Flower of Flesh), 1969 Ink on cardboard, 648 x 500 mm MNBA collection With this painting Servando received the first mention at the 8th Joan Miró International Prize for Drawing 143

ROSEMARY RODRÍGUEZ CRUZ

Getting Used to

That Taste

A

t times, life leaves us speechless; a work of art dumbfounds us. No matter how trite the statement may seem, this happened to me when I approached Servando Cabrera’s erotic paintings for the first time and I am still without words when a another of his works is “discovered.”

An artist of sensuality, free brushstrokes, excellent transparency, with an exact use of lines in drawing, and an authentic language endowed with accurate allusions: this is Servando. In his erotic cycle, which encompassed the 1970s, he reached the height of his talent, far from the unfounded accusations of perversion or obscenity.

Although his “coupling torsos” or, simply, his couplings, could speak of pleasure, they do not do it explicitly.

There are no better adjectives than “subtle” and “insinuating” to describe the works of this artist. According to Rufo Caballero: “sensuality devours reason. The austerity of Servando’s drawings, the solid inner architecture of his compositions, although very rhythmic or very nervous in the loosest or most expressive line, confer a density of what is exact, measured, equitable: what is dear to art.”83 Taboos persist in societies, as do conservative positions, rejection of change, and imposition of half-truths. It was not an easy task to appreciate Servando’s new styles. As a start, the very cutting censorship of Cabrera Moreno in what would later be called the “Grey Quinquennium” or “Black Decade,” prevented the exhibition of his works in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1971. The show was banned and removed. From then on, the doors of exhibition spaces that had hosted seven of his solo projects in the previous ten years were closed to him. Although his creativity did not cease, it took some time for his works to again appear in public. In the ‘70s, he held only two solo exhibitions.

83 Rufo Caballero: “Cimbrear en el aire. Deseo y pansexualidad en los ‘torsos acoplados’ de Cabrera Moreno” (Swaying in the Air. Desire and Pan-sexuality in Cabrera Moreno’s ‘Copulating Torsos’”), p. 39.

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One of the paintings Servando was working on when he died.

On the back was written: Para acostumbrarse a ese gusto (Getting Used to That Taste), 1981 Oil on canvas, 95 x 115 cm MBSCM collection

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Pages from the monthly magazine El Caimán Barbudo, No. 44, with illustrations by Servando.

The mood of the traumatic processes that had begun in 1965 continued, and early in the new decade, another incident marked him indelibly. In January 1971, the monthly magazine El Caimán Barbudo refused to distribute the issue No.44, which contained Servando’s illustrations. According to some, the magazines would end up incinerated, cut with sharp scissors, or turned into recycled paper… Thanks to the skill and foresight of those who saved some copies for themselves or to share, those of us who spend long hours researching Servando’s works were able to view them.

This marginalization turned out to be rather contradictory, since the magnificent drawings harmoniously matched the topics 146

of the texts they accompanied: “Clínica y selva de la anatomía” (Clinic and Jungle of the Anatomy) and “La clase de anatomía” (Anatomy Class). The lines of the poems were illustrated by a large human column of overlapping bodies. In Cicatrices (Scars), biting kisses are repeated, leaving deep scars on each face. In the refracted images, turned into symmetrical compositions, pubic hairs, breasts, and hands overlap in perfect visual harmony.

The 1970s, characterized by a large number of journeys, were very intense for Servando. It was as if he knew, deep inside, that his life would end in 1981. He enjoyed the small house in which Mozart composed The Marriage of Figaro, and the Sperl, a well-kept café in which Johann Strauss played the violin for the first time. He knew how to appreciate architecture, music, and flowers. He mingled with the people in every place he visited.

He had a strong relationship with the Saura brothers and, during his trips to the Iberian Peninsula, he stayed in one of the family homes. As a result of this friendship, we today have photos that capture these experiences, as well as works by Antonio and Carlos Saura. Servando wrote in a letter: “My close friend, more a brother than a friend, is filmmaker Carlos Saura; I lived in his home as a member of the family, counting on his unconditional support, that of his wife Geraldine Chaplin, and the love of his entire family, his children Carlos and Antonio, as well as other members not living in the house and whom I have known for over 30 years.”84 Servando admitted that the Spanish streets, squares, towns, cities, galleries, and museums were decisive factors in

GETTING USED TO THAT TASTE

Servando with the Carlos Saura family and Geraldine Chaplin

his training.85 He had regional preferences; Madrid was not his favorite city, although Madrid was the first place in Europe where he held a solo exhibition. “During the rest of my life, whenever possible, I believe it necessary to travel to Spain86 every two years, for two or three months, and perhaps at times more frequently …”87 If I didn’t live in Havana, I would like to live in Budapest or Seville. In Budapest I prefer Matthias Church, its back to the sky, its façade facing the Danube; in Seville, the Alcazar, the Gold Tower, the silent flow of the Guadalquivir; the improvised heel stomping of a flamenco dancer. I always find my favorite colors in those cities. That is why I blend them; I confuse them.

That mixture has all I need to make a painting. 88

Although the reason for his devotion to Seville is unknown, we fancifully imagine he may have fallen in love with one if its residents. The truth is that Seville played a significant role in Cabrera Moreno’s life, testimony of which are his frequent and long stays in that city, undoubtedly the one that attracted him most among the many places he visited. He described Seville in positive terms on numerous occasions.

He liked to walk through its streets and visit Maria Luisa Park; its singularities dazzled him.

84 Servando Cabrera Moreno: “Informe del viaje realizado por

España entre 1978-1979” (Report on the Trip Made in Spain, 1978-1979).

85 In his different trips, he saw many cities in Spain. In Andalusia:

Seville, Malaga, Alhambra, Granada, Ronda, Alhaurín de la Torre, Alhaurín el Grande, Cádiz; in Castile, La Mancha: Cuenca, Sigüenza, Consuegra, Toledo, Cuerva; in Castile and León: Ávila, Zamora, León, Valladolid; in Extremadura: Cáceres, Trujillo, Badajoz, Zafra; in Galicia: Lugo, Orense; in the Asturias Principality; Oviedo, Avilés; in the Madrid Community: Madrid, Alcalá de Henares; in Catalonia: Barcelona; in Aragón: Aragón and Zaragoza; in Valencia, the city with the same name. All these cities are mentioned in Servando’s letters to his family during his trip in Europe from May 26, 1980 to January 30, 1981, that are kept in the MBSCM. 86 He brought a great many folk art pieces from Spain, the largest

set in the MBSCM. His selection of recordings, described as an excellent compendium of world music –which unfortunately did not reach the MBSCM– also included numerous recordings from the peninsula. According to those who knew him, he took delight in listening to the deep “mine folksongs”, Juanita Reina, and Conchita Piquer, both of them copla legends.

87 Servando Cabrera Moreno: “Informe del viaje realizado por

España entre 1978-1979” (Report on the trip to Spain between 1978-1979).

88 Servando Cabrera Moreno: “Apuntes de viaje” (Travelling Notes),

p. 31.

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There are cities like Camaguey, Venice, Madrid, and Budapest that are a great mystery for me. But none like Seville. It is the city where I will always return, the city tailor-made for me, perhaps because of the links it might have with the Old Havana of my childhood. It is for me a symbol of love. That is why, from 1970 on, every year I paint a picture for it. I think it is a series that will come to an end with my death.89

He found in Seville a lasting source of inspiration. The above-mentioned series is part of the erotic cycle he was developing at the time, the longest in his career. According to documentary sources, the painter had anticipated the titles of these annual compositions until 2014. Of the twelve oil paintings he should have made through 1981, nine are part of the MBSCM collection; Saludos eternos para Sevilla (Eternal Greetings to Seville) is in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. No reference has been found of the other two.

In 2008, the MBSCM held an exhibition entitled Todos los recuerdos de Sevilla (All the Memories of Seville), like the oil painting he had intended to dedicate that year to the Andalusian city. Works by Servando were brought together, as well as various artifacts he had collected. The artist had summarized: “Everything I can say about Seville is not enough. One would have to visit there and to know me personally, and try to understand what I feel for that city.”90

Saludos eternos para Sevilla (Eternal Greetings to Seville), 1970 Oil on canvas, 270 x 140 cm MNBA collection OPPOSITE PAGE

Sevilla y el tiempo (Seville and the Times), 1975 Oil on canvas, 139 x 90.5 cm MBSCM collection 89 In “Servando Cabrera Moreno: toda la

pintura” (Servando Cabrera Moreno: All the Painting), p. 152.

90 Servando Cabrera Moreno: “Letter sent from

Seville to his relatives on May 1978.”

Sevilla siempre Sevilla (Seville Always Seville), 1976 Oil on canvas, 76 x 193 cm MBSCM collection 150

151

Cante para Sevilla (Cante for Seville), 1977 Oil on canvas, 149 x 119 cm MBSCM collection

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Arenal de Sevilla, 1980 Oil on canvas, 94 x 180 cm MBSCM collection

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Otra vez Sevilla (Seville Again), 1972 Oil on canvas, 165 x 300 cm MBSCM collection 155

Sevilla en el horizonte (Seville on the Horizon), 1979 Oil on canvas, 148 x 198.5 cm MBSCM collection 156

La soledad y Sevilla (Solitude and Seville), 1981 Oil on canvas, 198 x 98.5 cm MBSCM collection 157

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Y Sevilla! (And Seville!), 1974 Oil on canvas, 151 x 200 cm MBSCM collection

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Vuelve Sevilla (Seville Returns), 1978 Oil on canvas, 149.5 x 99.7 cm MBSCM collection 159

Series, like the one about Seville, typified the 1970s for Servando. Since 1972, faces of Latin American guerrillas inspired by the figure of Che appeared. In his drawings, using the cardboard colors, he portrayed male profiles made with an enormous economy of visual resources, thus displaying a synthesis of American traits on their faces. Unlike what was the case with the paper, on the canvases, like Somos y estamos (We Are and We Will Be – 1972), there is more than one subject, or perhaps the same one seen from different angles. The bearded faces which then rise, serious and manly, are full of sex-appeal.

He also made a series of “guajiros,” characters whose distinctive element was a yarey hat. He exploited the plastic qualities that each variation of the theme offers and, although reiterative —since the main principle is repeated almost like a cliché— 91 if we take some time, we discover a captivating 91 Perhaps the numerous requests for this series (just as those for “Habaneras”) were the fundamental cause of the numerous pieces in existence.

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Somos y estamos (We Are and We Will Be), 1972 Oil on canvas, 167 x 201 cm Private collection

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Untitled, 1975 Ink on paper, 1,020 x 825 mm MNBA collection

masculine magic in them. Medardo (1974), Baltasar Carlos (1975), Nicasio (1974), Matías (1974) show tough and seductive features. As a sign of virility, using intense contrasts and marks, he endowed them with a beard or short sideburns.

Here he used thick and strong outlines and tried to define the mixed race traits of typical Cubans.

In Los gloriosos días presentes (The Glorious Present Days – 1979), a crowd of “guajiros” makes us recall the sugar cane cutters of the 1960s, with a rhythm accentuated by eyebrows and hats moving in the same direction. Although there will possibly be an exception, as there is to every rule: long hair will not wave on the youngsters wearing yarey hats, as was the case of the guerrillas.

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GETTING USED TO THAT TASTE

Un hombre se levanta (Man Rising), 1972 Oil on canvas, 156 x 200 cm ICAIC collection 163

Nicasio, 1974 Tempera on cardboard, 575 x 730 mm MBSCM collection

Los gloriosos dĂ­as presentes (The Glorious Present Moments), 1979 Oil on canvas, 80 x 121.5 cm Museum of the City of Havana collection 164

Medardo, 1974 Tempera on cardboard, 560 x 710 mm MBSCM collection

165

Guajiro (Peasant), 1975 Mixed on paper, 510 x 635 mm Private collection 166

Bayamo, 1979 Tempera on cardboard, 515 x 432 mm Private collection 167

Many people identify Servando by another of his series: “Habaneras,” lyrical creations focused on the female figure: “Smooth foreheads […], arched eyebrows, gleaming complexion, red lips, straight nose, ivory neck…”92 are shared traits. The whole range of colors in a palette and its combinations adorn these young Cubans, who have a distant precedent in Habana (Havana – 1948), a painting in which the faces of three beautiful women return in his 1970s style.

In 1975, Servando gathered together these abundant and criticized works for the first time, after a long absence from Cuban galleries, under the title Habanera tú, as a tribute to the famous painting by Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes. In terms of production, the “habaneras” were too many, but this lyric chant to women is very pleasant for the viewer. In them, the painter conquered volume with a few, tenuous, subtle lights and shadows. He wanted to underline the fragility of the female figure and perpetuate it in delicate faces crowned by fine and orna92 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: “El retrato de una belleza” (Portrait of a

Beauty), p. 118.

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Muchacha de la calle Sitio (Girl on Calle Sitio), 1975 Plaka on cardboard, 500 x 650 mm Private collection OPPOSITE PAGE

Habana, Cuba, 1975 Oil on canvas, 179.5 x 150.5 cm MNBA collection

mented hair in the wind. He even emphasized traits that might define women, endowing them with eroticism.

Unlike the young men wearing hats, the contour line of the stylized figures is barely precise, but large almond-shaped eyes and full lips make them look similar. They blend with the background or seem to have emerged from it, since they frequently have the same hues. Some of the models’ looks are indifferent to the spectators; others seem to be looking directly at the viewers, and still others chase them. In Mis recuerdos de la calle Obispo (My Memories of Obispo Street – 1974), the hidden brush of the artist intends to surprise his lady —like a paparazzo would— with the purpose of obtaining a spontaneous image and not a contrived pose.

Arabesca diosa indiana (Arabesque Indian Goddess), 1973 Oil on canvas, 150 x 180 cm MNBA collection

His figures were either full-faced or in profile and, to highlight the movement from the neck to the face, arms, and hands, he distorted anatomy when necessary. Sometimes the head is surrounded by an arm, a ribbon, or a kerchief, as in Isabel y las brisas (Isabel and the Breezes – 1973), Siempre María (Always María – 1974), La madre del cordero (The Lamb’s ­Mother – 1981). Servando’s mastery of color and great dexterity in combining warm and cold tones is quite clear in the plurality of images of these city women. The contrast of colors, concepts, 170

and ideas seems to be a constant element in his life and work.

In Arabesca diosa indiana (Arabesque Indian Goddess – 1973), 93 he questions the genesis of this “exquisite virginal woman,” with an “imperious beauty” and “female virtue”.94

93 Dedicated to María Teresa Vera for her interpretation of the song Santa Cecilia, by Manuel Corona.

94 Fragments of the above mentioned song.

Siempre María (Always María), 1974 Oil on canvas, 79.5 x 94 cm MBSCM collection

171

La madre del cordero (The Lamb’s Mother), 1981 Oil on canvas, 75 x 100 cm MBSCM collection

172

Isabel y las brisas (Isabel and the Breeze), 1973 Oil on canvas, 99 x 119 cm MBSCM collection

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Presencia joven (Youthful Presence, details), 1973 Mural designed for the Vladimir I. Lenin Vocational School

In perfect harmony, faces of placid “Habaneras” and young men, machetes in hand, calmly dance in the mural canvas Presencia joven (Youthful Presence – 1973), developed within an art project95 designed for the Vladimir Ilich Lenin Vocational School. In a large, 24 sq. m. mural painting Así amanece Cuba (Cuba Awakens – 1976),96 for the Cuban embassy in Ottawa, larger than life “Habaneras” and “Guajiros”, initially in small format, now flood gigantic works.

La cordillera (The Mountain Range – 1972) and El Moncada (Moncada – 1974), his best murals, conceived for ICAIC library and today housed in the office of Criterios magazine, are Servando’s Guernica. Unlike the Spanish painter, who made countless studies and sketches for the 1937 monochromatic masterpiece, no sketches were made for Servando’s colossal canvases.

In one of his letters, Servando wrote: “La Cordillera… is a scandal,” more than a scandal, it was an encounter, a confrontation. Once again, it did not give a realistic image of the 174

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Details of the mural Así amanece Cuba (Cuba Awakens), 1976 Oil on canvas, 260 x 900 cm Cuban embassy in Canada

extensive mountain range which, according to Fidel Castro, begins in the Sierra Maestra and ends in the Andes.97 A tangle of “bodies” and tendons tightly stretch across the canvas, border-like: strong, nude fragments in effective blue tones. The symbols of this piece “…had already appeared many times in the same manner. Consequently, these were images latent in his subconscious,, together with the various meanings associated with them.”98

95 Besides Servando Cabrera’s pieces, those by Mariano Rodríguez, Luis Martínez Pedro and Carlos Boix were included. The mural René Portocarrero had suggested was never made.

96 In 1976 he was so much devoted to art, that besides this painting, he made other 299.

97 Servando wrote Fidel’s words in brackets on the reverse of the piece.

98 Herschel B. Chipp: “El significado de Guernica” (The Meaning of

Guernica), p. 146.

175 GETTING USED TO THAT TASTE

176

La cordillera (The Mountain Range), 1972 Oil on canvas, 148 x 362 cm ICAIC collection 177

El Moncada (The Moncada), 1974 Oil on canvas, 176 x 498 cm ICAIC collection A figure in the central group may be Fidel. His arms point the way to Moncada, to the struggle, and the path to hope, in the

El Moncada (1974) another brilliant composition in ­every sense, arrived as a cry of struggle.99 With enormous movement and strength, the voluptuousness of the bodies exceeds the canvass margins. According to Gerardo Mosquera, Servando studied in depth the events of July 26, 1953; this painting dedicated to “All those who gave their lives. All those who survive,”100 summarizes “…through no documentary or literary resources, but purely artistic ones, the 26 of July attack and its historical significance.”101 The artist himself lingers on the details: 178

background of the painting. In the middle, one of the main figures, the torture of Boris Luis Santa Coloma, is marked in red, and that same red is repeated in Abel’s blindness. You may perhaps identify a foot of Tassende’s, or a body also pointing to the future, that of poet Raúl Gómez García. Between them, two woman’s hands, one to the left may be Melba; the other, to the right, Haydée. The faces of the dead are peaceful, trusting: they are heroes, sleeping. The only two violent faces in the painting are of those who are still alive, with the decision to fight in the Sierra mountains.102

99 El Moncada was the cover of Revolucion y Cultura magazine, no. 59, July 1977. The illustrations in the central section were to be

by Servando too, but since they were considered unrelated with the historic event, the directors of the publication decided to replace them by those of other Cuban artists.

100 Servando’s dedication on the back of the painting.

101 Gerardo Mosquera: “Servando Cabrera Moreno: toda la pintura” (Servando Cabrera Moreno: All the Painting), p. 168.

102 Quoted by Gerardo Mosquera, op. cit., p. 169.

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Well-known figures in politics, sports, and culture, as well as friends and close relatives, were portrayed by Cabrera Moreno in this decade. He also painted leaders who had not appeared in his works from the 1960s. In his journey through the development of a Cuban identity, Guiteras (1972), with his challenging look and penetrating eyes, touches us. Portraits, widespread throughout his entire career, validated his ability to capture expressions.

For the eighteenth anniversary of the death in combat of two heroes from the War for Independence, he painted Un cubano llamado Juan Bruno (A Cuban Named Juan Bruno – 1976) and Nuestro Pancho (Our Pancho – 1976). As if wanting to capture the last moment of their combat, Servando personified them next to their horses, as Carlos Enríquez had done.

Both pieces have a brief historical note on the back and a dedication by the author: “To the memory of Juan Bruno Zayas, who was admired by Maceo and continued the general’s exploits” and “Our Pancho, son of Máximo Gomez, an example for our youth, admired by Maceo. He died at 20 years of age, next to his superior.”

Julio Antonio en Obispo (Julio Antonio on Obispo Street – 1981), a magnificent portrait of the communist leader Julio Antonio Mella, seduces because of the well known natural charm of the young hero. Cabrera Moreno’s Mella is a heavily built man, with firm sight, dressed ahead of his times. His open shirt shows his muscular chest. It is said that this provocative, seductive and erotic painting is based on photographs

by Tina Modotti.

In 1977, a year after Alberto Juantorena became the first athlete to win the 400 and 800 meter races in the Olympic Games, Servando painted his portrait El elegante de las pistas (The Elegant Track Star), as the people nicknamed him, shows his unmistakable sideburns, curly hair, light eyes, and typical white socks. Cabrera Moreno did not place him in the center of the composition, because he preferred to focus on the background. There are two clear moments: the athlete’s legs, which Servando especially admired, and the final strides, seen, in cubist style, from multiple angles.

He portrayed Fidel (1980) from a different perspective, in profile. Although similar to Che (1972), Servando highlights the contrast between the aggressive palette with reds, oranges and yellows he used and the serene facial expression. The leader of the Cuban Revolution, who was 54 years old when the portrait was made, is captured as eternally young and attractive.

Meticulous and organized with the inventory and fate of his art, Servando recorded the titles of his works, and the collection or person to which they had been sent. Thanks to these lists we were able to contact the main collectors and learn about the numerous pieces sent to the Cuban diplomatic offices abroad, which we intend to reproduce in future volumes. Marta Jiménez, Cuban ambassador to Switzerland in 180

Fidel, 1980 Oil on canvas, 100 x 76 cm Private collection

the final years of the 1970s, contributed to the management of his body of work, some group exhibitions, and trips to various European countries. He dedicated to her the exquisitely beautiful canvas Flores dulces para Marta Jiménez (Sweet Flowers for Marta Jiménez).

Servando depicted a friend of his, Evidio (1972), in an atypical canvas, full of a golden color, like his friend’s hair. The pose, although close to those of Latin American guerrillas, does not prevent a detailed description of the portrayed man.

This is also the case of in Nacida en mayo (Born in May), the portrait of Evidio’s mother (1975), conceived as a “Habanera.”

In both of them, Servando is loyal to the ideo-aesthetic assumptions of this period of his creation.

Perhaps as a prelude to his death, in 1977, while in Europe he made the peculiar series La soledad de un autorretrato

GETTING USED TO THAT TASTE

(The Solitude of a Self-Portrait), commonly known as Cumpleaños (Birthdays). He devoted 54 drawings to himself, one for each year of his life. Torsos, limp sexual organs, stylized and sinuous extremities reappear in these magnificent erotic drawings, all with the same dimensions and bearing allusive titles: Como un veintiocho de mayo (As a May Twenty-Eighth), Los días me pertenecen (The Days Belong to Me)…

In keeping with his attraction for the human figure and eroticism, in 1978, while in Spain, he made few but significant drawings with acrylics, at the time an exclusive material. As a tribute to Spanish playwrights, he composed Los muchachos de Tirso de Molina (Tirso de Molina’s Boys), Pepe el romano and Pedro Romero, in which, in the background, he combines erotic elements with his already characteristic androgynous faces.

The graceful and soft line now turns violent in the union of male bodies: hugs, kisses, genitalia, copulations, group intercourse, pleasant pauses and reposes. These probable thematic groupings suggest that the artist was a connoisseur of the old ­Hindu text Kama Sutra. In this decade, the sensual air that, since the 1940s, could be breathed in each undulating line, in each body, reached a poetic climax.

When studying the main direction of the national visual arts production during the period in which Servando developed his body of work, we acknowledge him as a pioneer and advocate of erotic and homoerotic art. The time separating us from the years in which Servando’s work was “frowned upon,” allows us to compare him with the poetics of his contemporaries and to defend his condition as an initiator. The canvases of those times, reviled and whisked away, are today a confirmation, a symptom of Cuban visual arts in the 20th century.

The Cuban Da Vinci, or the golden left-handed one, as he was called by some, was one of the most versatile, consistent and virtuous men in Cuban visual arts and culture. An exquisite person, a friend, an intellectual: this was the master Servando Cabrera Moreno.

Juantorena, 1977 Oil on canvas, 149 x 100 cm Private collection

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Un cubano llamado Juan Bruno (A Cuban Named Juan Bruno), 1976 Oil on canvas, 120 x 102 cm Museum of the City of Havana collection OPPOSITE PAGE

Julio Antonio en Obispo (Julio Antonio on Obispo Street), 1981 Oil on canvas, 100 x 78 cm Private collection 182

La antorcha (The Torch), 1977 From the series La soledad de un autorretrato (The Solitude of a Self-Portrait) Ink on cardboard, 550 x 750 mm Private collection

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GETTING USED TO THAT TASTE

Como un veintiocho de mayo (As a May Twenty-Eighth), 1977 From the series La soledad de un autorretrato (The Solitude of a Self-Portrait) Ink on cardboard, 550 x 750 mm Private collection

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Pedro Romero, 1978 Acrylic on cardboard, 495 x 715 mm MBSCM collection 186

Pepe el Romano, 1978 Acrylic on cardboard, 495 x 715 mm MBSCM collection 187

Amistad (Friendship), 1975 Ink on cardboard, 660 x 810 mm MBSCM collection

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GETTING USED TO THAT TASTE

Nuestros isle単os (Our Islanders), 1976 Ink on cardboard, 500 x 650 mm MBSCM collection

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El dios de menta (The God of Mint), 1979 Ink on cardboard, 502 x 650 mm MBSCM collection

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Untitled, 1979 Ink on cardboard, 500 x 620 mm MBSCM collection

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Untitled, 1971 Ink on paper, 400 x 510 mm MBSCM collection

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El Apolo de Luyan贸 (The Apollo from Luyan贸), 1974 Ink on cardboard, 710 x 510 mm MBSCM collection FOLLOWING SPREAD

Muerte y vida (Death and Life), 1972 Oil on canvas, 128 x 237.5 cm MBSCM collection 192

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GETTING USED TO THAT TASTE

Yo quiero (I Want), 1976 Oil on canvas 97 x 123 cm Private collection

La pagoda (The pagoda), 1979 Oil on canvas 134.5 x 60 cm Private collection 197

El lecho tibio (The Warm Bed), 1980 Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm Private collection

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Las hojas de oto単o caen en la meseta (Autumn leaves falling on the table), 1977 Oil on canvas, 118.5 x 149.5 cm MBSCM collection 199

El silencio (Silence), 1970 Oil on canvas, 75 x 175.5 cm MBSCM collection 200

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Mucho mรกs temprano que tarde (Much Earlier than Later), 1980 Oil on canvas, 152.2 x 63.8 cm Private collection

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Amor joven y desconocido (Young and Unknown Love), 1979 Oil on canvas, 139 x 179.5 cm MBSCM collection 203

La joven pintura (Young Painting), 1979 Oil on canvas, 119 x 161 cm MNBA collection

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Macho puro (Pure “Macho”), n. d.

Oil on canvas, 99.5 x 80.5 cm MNBA collection

A quién le importa (Who Cares), 1981 Oil on canvas, 120.3 x 149 cm MBSCM collection 207

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Los mejores días de nuestro año (The Best Days of Our Year), 1975 Oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm MNBA collection

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Una bandeja para Bautista (A Platter for Bautista), 1981 Oil on canvas, 116 x 96 cm MNBA collection

209 GETTING USED TO THAT TASTE

La toma del cuerpo por un cubano (Body Study by a Cuban), 1974 Oil on canvas, 206 x 111.5 cm MBSCM collection

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La memoria de los borrados (Remembrance of Erased Memories), 1977 Oil on canvas, 219 x 140.5 cm MNBA collection Written on the back of the painting: “Erased memories can physically offer a remembrance to those still alive.

Dedicated to Roberto López Reyes, Saúl Yelín, Boris Luis Santa Coloma, Ernestina Linares, Rigoberto López, Joan Crawford, Pablo Picasso and above all to Isabel Moreno Alcázar”

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Estoy contento (I Am Happy), 1977 Oil on canvas 151.5 x 62.5 cm MBSCM collection

Toda la pintura (All the Painting), 1974 Oil on canvas 275 x 315 cm Private collection 212

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El largo camino de las nostalgias (The Long Path of Nostalgia), 1981 Oil on canvas, 75 x 160 cm MBSCM collection

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Servando was very courageous…

STAT E M E N T B Y

M argar i ta Rui z , A FRIEND OF SERVANDO. She worked at MNBA, Consejo Nacional de Cultura (National Cultural

Council) and Consejo Asesor para el Desarrollo de la Escultura Monumentaria y Ambiental (Council for the Development of Environmenal and Sculptural monuments). She presided over the Consejo Nacional de las Artes Plásticas (National Arts Council) and the Consejo Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural (National Council of Cultural Heritage). Dated November 6, 2012.

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ervando was one of the intellectuals and artists who answered Vicentina Antuña’s call when she was appointed Director of Culture in the nascent Revolutionary Government. They had both studied at San Alejandro and were great friends. Later on, they met in the activities held by Nuestro ­Tiempo, the important cultural institution that brought together part of the art vanguard in the 1950s. He worked in the Visual Arts Department directed by Marta Arjona.

I met him when he was carrying out an extensive national promotion plan for the visual arts. He frequently travelled to various provinces. He also collaborated in the design of the network of art galleries opened in provincial capitals.

In 1962 he traveled with Graziella Pogolotti and Raúl Oliva as organizers of the exhibition Pintura cubana contemporánea (Contemporary Cuban Painting), which was presented in the socialist countries. Servando, quite the conversationalist, would later describe the impression left on him by the people, the architecture, the painting, and, especially, the folk art in those countries. He had traveled a lot and already owned a substantial collection of folk art, to which he added new items on that trip. He was an expert on the subject. He also brought back drawings of townspeople, peasants, children, and women. Some of those beautiful drawings are today shown in his museum.

I started visiting his home after that trip. At first I accompanied Marta Arjona, who at the time was his friend. Actually, it was his parent’s home, turned into an extension of his fervor as a collector. He built his studio and his personal rooms in the garage and on the roof in an addition designed by architects Fernando Pérez O’Reilly and Pepe Linares. We were greeted with much love in his home. His mother was an excellent cook, and Servando enjoyed food very much. After lunch, we went to his studio, where I had the privilege of watching him draw and paint his epic works. We also had fun with demonstrations of his skill with his left hand, which he placed on a piece of paper and didn’t remove until completing a drawing in just one stroke.

In 1962 Servando decided to leave the Visual Arts direction to join the project of the National School of Art, which 216

advocated for a new way of teaching. Surrounded by students from all over the country, he soon became an acknowledged professor, respected and admired by his pupils, for whom he withheld no secrets as he opened the door to knowledge. He invited them to his studio, and shared with them his art materials. To visit him in his class was to meet a true professor, always eliciting new ideas, prompting the students to improve their drawing and to discover new color combinations.

Upon returning from a trip, the school informed him that there was concern about the presence of professors with political or moral “weaknesses” which would influence the

Servando (left) with Cuban architect Raúl Oliva and Hungarian painter Sandor Ek in the Ernest Museum in Budapest, for the opening of Exposición de pintura cubana (1962).

young or cause inappropriate situations. Without direct accusations, and with no evidence, they deemed that his homosexuality could be detrimental to his students. In spite of a firm defense by Jorge Rigol, the director of the Visual Arts School, and by other professors, in 1965, Servando was dismissed.

From then on he traveled a great deal. Raúl Roa, the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, commissioned his works to be given to foreign dignitaries, and placed important ­paintings

Homenaje a la soledad (Tribute to Solitude), 1970 Oil on canvas, 175.5 x 326 cm MNBA collection

in our embassies and diplomatic residences, which are today an impressive heritage of the Cuban chancellery.

In 1967 Servando suffered a serious myocardial infarction that required a long period of recovery. He decided to take care of his health and shut himself up in his studio, where he painted and drew feverishly. In 1969 I suggested that he participate in that year’s International Joan Miró Prize for Drawing.

He finally entered the erotic piece Flor de carne (Flower of Flesh) and was awarded first mention, consolidating his reputation as a master of drawing.

I remember him choosing the pieces he would send to Salon 70. One of them, Homenaje a la soledad (Tribute to Solitude), was among the most beautiful paintings shown in this important event, in which his students exhibited as professionals for the first time. Little or nothing of his erotic painting was seen after 1971, and many of his erotic drawings and paintings of those years were given away as presents or stored in homes of friends. Servando could not live without working; he focused on Cuban faces and the women’s heads he baptized as “Habaneras,” which soon became famous.

His long friendship with filmmakers, literati and theater figures made up his world of relationships during that pe-

riod. This is clear from the requests he received for his drawings and paintings, and in posters and illustrations that today are collectors’ items. He accepted two important requests in those years: Alfredo Guevara commissioned two large pieces for ­ICAIC: La cordillera (The Mountain Range) and El Moncada.

Architect Andrés Garrudo, the designer of the Vladimir Ilich Lenin Vocational School, included a Servando mural painting to enhance the artistic ambiance of the school.

Presencia joven (Youthful Presence), 1973 Oil on canvas. Mural designed for the Vladimir I. Lenin Vocational School

Poster for the film Páginas del diario de José Martí (Pages from the Diary of José Martí), by director José Massip

Guiteras, 1972 Ink on paper, 1,100 x 750 mm Museum of the City of Havana collection

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Nuestro Pancho (Our Pancho), 1976 Oil on canvas, 120 x 102 cm Museum of the City of Havana collection 218

Servando always maintained his stand as a revolutionary; he made illustrations for the Sandinista Front and for the Puerto Rican patriots. His portraits of Nicaraguan martyr Rigoberto López and of Lolita Lebrón, together with those of Martí, Fidel, Che, Guiteras, Mella, and Panchito Gómez Toro, may be considered among the best in Cuban portraiture.

Servando was very brave. He defended his right to be true to himself and to his free artistic expression, not allowing anything to stop him. He was, as Graziella Pogolotti defined him, an isolated figure in Cuban art… a lonely walker.

…he was larger than life itself INTERVIEW WITH S alvado r

Fe r nánde z , A FRIEND OF SERVANDO. He was a set designer and today is the technical deputy director of

the Cuban National Ballet; in 2012, he was granted the Annual Award of the Gran Teatro de La Habana. Interview made on September 19, 2012.

Servando with Carlos and Antonio Saura

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met Servando at Nuestro Tiempo. In 1959 he was a consultant to Marta Arjona in the Visual Arts Department at the National Council of Culture. Some other architecture students and I were hired to mount exhibitions in the Fine Arts Palace. I followed him in his world for many years. He was a very vital person who willingly shared his knowledge. He had already attained international renown, was a friend of the Saura brothers, Geraldine Chaplin, Shirley MacLaine, and this was all apparent. He was our cultural godfather.

In 1959, Teatro Estudio staged The Good Woman of Szechwan, the first play by Bertolt Brecht to be performed in Cuba. Servando was going to do the costumes, while two other artists were in charge of the set design. He introduced us to Vicente Revuelta and his sister Raquel, and one day he told me: “I’m not going to make the costumes. It’s very boring,

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seams here, color there… You’ll do it.” I assured him I didn’t know how to sew on a button and he answered: “Read the play.

I will guide you and put you on the right track.” I began to make little drawings of the characters —Chinese of very humble origins. Servando advised me to stay away from Chinese folklore. I made the most impersonal of all the peasants in the world, with rolled up pants. It was my first design, at a time when I still didn’t dream of being a theater designer; later on, I continued designing, always with his help.

He was very much interested in Cuban architecture.

He bought room dividers, antique Cuban furniture. He helped me in my career, although he never tried to directly influence what I was doing. He was incapable of saying: “Do it this way.”

Servando’s house was like a library where you could go to find data on visual arts; most of his books were on art. He

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Illustration for the program of the play El alma buena de Se-Chuán (The Good Woman of Szechwan), 1956

was a gentleman, the most elegant, respectful person I have ever met. I know there are many rumors about him: all lies. He was the object of many dirty tricks. They fired him from the National School of Art; Carmelo was Servando’s formidable foe and he was a pilar nobody could move in that place. It is possible that the expulsion influenced his later work, as a reaction against everything, and also because many people left him to his fate.

I think his students must be grateful to him as long as they live, because he was greater than life itself. He gave, he gave away… he even gave you what you didn’t want. In conversation he chose a topic, dwelled it and went on. You stayed there like a fool, listening to everything he could address: Andalusian music, Italian cinema, Mayan art… Although he was well known in the sphere of culture, as a person he was in-

wardly marked in his dealings with others, in his work, in his painting. Servando was already great and withstood it, but a small part of him became more rebellious, not bitter, but shocking, on the defensive. In our conversations, he avoided talking about it.

Nobody entered his studio except the person who cleaned it. He kept his personal life very private, but he loved to have young people around him, because he couldn’t stop teaching.

Servando was the nicest and most respectful person in the world. He was very discreet, never intruding into anybody’s life, but when asked, he would counsel you even on personal or family matters. I have the best memories of him. There is nothing bad I can say about him. He was one of the most wonderful people I have ever met.

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222 © Tito Álvarez

He had an extraordinary collection…

INTERVIEW WITH M ar ta

A r jo na , SCULPTOR AND CERAMIST. She was the director of the Visual Arts Department at the Dirección

Nacional de Cultura (National Directorate of Culture) and national director of Museos y Monumentos (Museums and Monuments). She headed the Consejo Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural (National Council of Cultural Heritage) from 1995 to 2006, when she passed away. Interview made on September 9, 2004.

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met Servando at San Alejandro School; he was finishing his studies while I was attending a school attached to San Alejandro. He was a very communicative guy, and very partial to art in general, not only painting. He had a vast culture.

We were schoolmates for a year or so. After he finished school, I continued studying until 1945, when I graduated. We were good friends, almost like brother and sister, and we saw each other often.

When he was in New York he taught painting to children and with this money he survived. He took good care of the children and the families loved him very much; he was ­affectionate with the little ones. This is how he first made a living: teaching.

When the Revolution prevailed, he began to draw more figuratively, using more political and epic themes. Then his work became more sensual. Later, he moved into erotic painting, the “Guajiros” series. That is Servando’s expression and that is his life. He left a truly extraordinary body of work. He was a painter who became a very Cuban and very original artist, under exceptional conditions and, like Mariano and Amelia, he was not influenced by any other painter. He was an original person, very elegant in his painting.

His obsessions were traveling and collecting folk art.

He owned a really extraordinary collection, which, fortunately, is complete in this museum. It will be here forever for all to see, because it’s a permanent exhibition of his entire folk art collection.

Servando had wanted to make a folk art museum. At first, the site that is now the Colonial Art Museum in the Plaza de la Catedral was considered for the museum, but, for many reasons, it was never located there. In any case, at the time he had not decided to part with his collection. Actually, Alfredo Guevara had the idea of founding a museum with Servando’s artifacts after he learned they were not being preserved. Alfredo went to Servando’s home, saw the way things were, and took on the task. He began to work with Servando’s sister and brotherin-law. And that is how this museum was created. All the works shown in the museum were rather costly for the State.

Servando was quite a joker and his father loved him dearly. When he was traveling, specifically when he spent New Year’s Eve abroad, his father put his son’s picture on the table

and they even drank a toast to him. Servando was furious when he heard the story. That’s how his father was, very jovial and a very nice person; all of them were very nice, a very good family.

I believe Servando was not greatly appreciated during his lifetime, because in those days the most famous group of painters was known as the “Havana Painters.” Mariano, Portocarrero, and Amelia were already mature artists with a very solid body of work. They were not too affectionate with their colleagues. But Servando never quarreled with anyone. Honestly, I don’t remember him quarreling with anyone.

Servando, as a human being, was a rather quiet person, with his respected and respectable characteristics. He was a very personal painter, who began following strong academia conventions, and became an exceptional artist in various styles, thus creating a personality of his own.

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…a great walker in the city STATEMENT BY E n r i q ue

Capab l anca , ARCHITECT FRIEND OF SERVANDO.

Dated February 26, 2012.

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probably met him in the second half of 1960. I had started working in the General Directorate of Culture; my post was in the Music Section and Servando was in Visual Arts.

Servando often invited his colleagues, including me, to his studio on 68th Street, for informal gatherings on Saturday nights. I was always the youngest in the group, and also the one who talked the least, except when asked direct questions.

At times, Servando invited those present to see his most recent painting, but he never showed any work in progress, until it was finished. He kept index cards of all his works, with title, dimensions, date, and owner.

Servando liked to receive people at his studio; he was always the center of the gatherings, telling tales and stories.

He was friendly and kind in the widest sense. He was also very passionate with his friends and had a strict sense of friendship and loyalty. If he felt he had been deceived or “betrayed,” he did not forgive or it was very difficult for him to do so. On those occasions, at times he became absolutely impossible.

When I met him, he already had many folk art pieces.

Most of them were from Spain, although I remember some Mexican and Guatemalan masks. He attached great value to his collection and devoted much care to its preservation. As he bought new pieces, he needed to have new display cabinets made. Once he had to demolish a wall to make more space.

He was always doing and redoing “his museum.” For Servando, his collection was much more than handcrafts… His records of popular and traditional music from the entire world were part of it. He liked melodies and rhythms from the Mediterranean, Latin America, the southern United States, flamenco, and also jazz.103 Architects and architecture students were always present at these Saturday gatherings in the 1960s… I remember Raúl Oliva, Fernando Pérez O’Reilly, Salvador Fernández... architects and set designers.

Servando knew and appreciated Havana’s architecture and he was a great walker in the city. At times he organized Sunday outings to visit some specific place, which might be Chinatown, Santa María del Rosario, or some unknown restaurant. He liked walking the streets of Havana with his friends:

pointing out a window, a wrought iron balcony, decorative tiles, or a detail of a mask or relief. He said that you should watch where you’re walking, but you should also look up, so as to discover an entire world of forms and visual surprises.

Photo taken by Servando of his students Lázaro Blanco, Tomás Sánchez and Eduardo Izquierdo, and his friend Richard during a walk through Old Havana (1966).

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Figura (Figure), 1957 Tempera on cardboard, 735 x 584 mm MNBA collection

103 His preferences were varied and included flamenco singer Niña de los Peines (Pastora María Pavón Cruz), Portuguese singer Amália Rodrigues, and Greek actress Melina Mercouri, but also Ella Fitgerald’s blues and Lotte Lenya singing songs by Kurt Weill.

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225 THE LONG PATH OF NOSTALGIA

…how bright Servando is INTERVIEW WITH PAINTER O r l ando

Yane s , PROFESSOR AT THE NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ART (ENA).

March 9, 2006

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met Servando when we were appointed to the staff of professors at ENA. He was a professor together with Adigio Benítez and Fayad Jamís, who was also his friend.

He was an exceedingly kind man. I remember one day I visited him and there was an enormous painting. I said: “Hey, how nice this painting is, Servando”, and he answered: “I’ll give it to you. Take it.”

Picasso exerted a great influence on Servando’s painting: strong, very strong lines, dividing the elements in the group. Subsequently he made more realist works and, later went through another period in which the Revolution was a constant theme: the struggle, combat, and war.

He also had a phase of pictorial expressionism.

He loved teaching, which was the first requirement: while it’s true you have to learn teaching methodology, your sensitivity must play a role, because a well-studied, well-conceived teaching methodology remains superficial if applied in a mechanical way. You must feel what you are teaching.

His contract was terminated because of an extremist stand: the personal traits of teachers were thought to negatively influence students, but Servando was a very honest professor. He exerted a tremendous influence on the students, as did Antonia Eiriz.

He had a gift for drawing, for painting, and for the artistic expression of his feelings. He had talent, that is the key point, and sensitivity to express it.

Servando’s art should be more highly respected. He is one of the great Cuban painters, on equal footing with Carlos Enríquez, Mariano, Portocarrero. He painted many subjects and went through markedly different periods. One phase was significantly influenced by Picasso; he was assimilating, not copying him. I smiled to myself and said: “Gosh, how bright Servando is!”

La mesa (The Table, reproduction), 1959 Mixed on canvas, 92 x 58 cm SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2009

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Tres figuras (Three Figures), 1959 Ink on paper, 450 x 287 mm MNBA collection

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Sensuality marks his entire art…

INTERVIEW WITH G e r ardo

M o s q ue r a , CURATOR AND ART CRITIC, author of “Servando Cabrera Moreno: toda la pintura” (Servando

Cabrera Moreno: All the Painting), his first essay on the artist’s works in 1977 and extended in 1983. Interview on November 12, 2004; amended by the interviewee on September 28, 2012.

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had never had any previous contact with Servando when I approached him for a research paper I wanted to do on his painting.

Servando is one of the great Cuban painters, one of the artists most prone to mutability in Latin American art. He had a sensibility for experimentation, or perhaps he also got bored with things. Assessment of his work is a matter of curatorship: paintings must be judged according to important periods or as a journey through change, from the inclusive perspective introduced by postmodernism.

Drawing prevails in every way in his painting style, which went through several phases, some more interesting than others, with good and bad choices. After his academic period, sensuality marked his entire artistic output. His most important works depicted erotic themes and achieved a level of abstraction: they approach the cosmic, an erotic ode to the world.

In the late 1950s, an evolution to figurative painting: images, shapes, bodies start to consolidate in Servando’s work. The Cuban Revolution arrived and Servando was moved: he was very revolutionary. His paintings from the early days of the Revolution are now very dated, very much of those times, very well done. What is interesting is the anthropological exploration of Cuban traits.

Servando was marginalized during a very important period: his work was not shown. This exclusion was due to his erotic art, very intense, which even included homoerotic pieces. He was an artist who wanted to follow that theme and did not waver, although the canvases were not bought by museums; they were spread about as gifts or sold.

Servando and Umberto Peña were the first two artists to create gay art in Cuba beginning in the 1960s. It could even be said that they were international forerunners of this movement begun in the United States in the 1970s.

Daring to work on homosexuality during those repressive years was a strong point in his favor, and it was very courageous of him. All his male bodies have a gay, homosexual look. For example, in this oil painting we can see that he is devouring Juantorena with his eyes.104 We also have the “Habaneras,” phalluses disguised as women, a colossal joke and a way to indirectly show eroticism. It is impossible to explain his painting without knowing he was gay; this fact should not be hidden. Servando was gay and, at the same time, eroticizing, he was a precursor of what today we call gay art.

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There were paintings the museum kept but did not exhibit: Molote (Riot) was banned. It was like a secret document. Supposedly it was an allusion to the queues, to unruly behavior. He became indignant when I told him that at the National Museum they wouldn’t let me see those paintings, and then he remembered Marta Arjona, whom he hated with good reason.

My original Servando essay appeared in the first issue of Revolución y Cultura to be published after the establishment of the Ministry of Culture. It had been difficult to get the article into the magazine, because at that moment its director was an official105 who had worked with Moncada magazine, which belonged to the Ministry of the Interior. The cover was to be El matorral (The Thicket), but the director halted the printing of the magazine and it was replaced with Isabel y las brisas (Isabel and the Breezes). Even so, some copies were printed. I don’t know where they’re to be found, but they are collector’s items.

Columnas humanas (Human Columns) were splendid, but did not appear either.

Seville was a symbol of love, the city he liked most; perhaps because of a love affair he might have had there. The series devoted to Seville are among Servando’s best works.

My articles helped him in some modest way: I wrote in his defense, explaining why the artist was important for our times, and discussing the issue of eroticism in art, ridiculously censored in the 1970s. It was an ideological-cultural battle.

Then the Ministry of Culture was established. My work contributed to his acceptance again: to be able to emerge once more into the limelight.

At that moment, his painting had lost its appeal and the values dropped. Servando was too old to participate in the process of rupture in Latin American art. He was a little behind the times: he did not belong to the Orígenes generation or to the moderns; he was in that second half of the 1970s that remained unlabeled. There was a consistency with what other artists were doing at the international level; but Servando’s

104 Portrait by Servando Cabrera, made in 1977, of Olympic recordbreaker Alberto Juantorena.

105 Although Noel Navarro appears as director in the magazine credits, Mosquera maintains that the veto on Servando’s work came from Jesús Hernández, who had replaced Navarro in the direction of Revolución y Cultura while the issue was at press.

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Rómulo y Remo (Romulus and Remus), 1981 Oil on canvas, 118.7 x 148 cm MBSCM collection

work had little market value because of the lack of recognition he had suffered throughout these times. It was uneven and abundant: it saturated the market.

Cabrera Moreno had many relationships: in the Chancellery, with filmmakers and theater figures, and his production was spread around among friends and institutions. In my research, I tried to offer data on his works together with his collections, so as to follow their trail.

He saw much painting from the great European tradition. He was an academic painter. His painting was always academic in the balance of his compositions, with a certain canon of regularity having to do with the classic and academic tradition.

He liked to live in the baroque ambiance he had created in his home; he had catalogued all his objects and he en-

joyed them. Whenever he traveled, he came back loaded with folk art, items that went from religious objects to agricultural tools. The artist’s sensitive eye was there when choosing the object. He also loved cinema, ballet, reading... The city of Havana fascinated him. He loved everyday things: the titles of the first “Habaneras” were names of grocery stores and establishments in Havana. He enjoyed his city very much, everything vernacular in it; he enjoyed life very much. He liked to live well.

He was not an obsessed artist, although his exclusion caused him great suffering. He was very methodical in his schedules, which were very rigorous.

He was not an artist engrossed in his own work; many young people brought him their works and critiques would take place. He was a great professor and his students enjoyed his teaching; he was a very broadminded person. He had a 229

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Tientos, 1979 Oil on canvas, 100 x 80.5 cm MBSCM collection

Issue No. 59 of Revolución y Cultura magazine, 1977

rather special character, always on the defensive. He was a very sensitive, very open, very intelligent man, with many interests, but marginalization and lack of recognition made him bitter. He had many friends, great relationships, great loves.

He maintained his status in life. He was aware of his talent and kept his distance: his behavior was not too affable. He dressed simply, nothing striking. He behaved in a very Cuban way. He was short, not fat but rather stout, mannered in his way of talking and gestures. You noticed he was gay; he gesticulated with his hands, but not much. He was a very active homosexual, but not a “flaming queen.“ I remember him saying, when describing some experiences: ”those are very nice things to live through.” He liked large, well-lighted, open houses and to be comfortable in an interesting place; He would have traded his house for this one.106

106 He is referring to the house where MBSCM

is located.

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We must know a painter…

INTERVIEW WITH Cándi da

C . A l o nso Lóp ez , A PUPIL OF SERVANDO CABRERA’S PUPIL AND RESTORER OF HIS WORK.

Made on January 5, 2005; amended by the interviewee on October 24, 2012.

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n 1962, while I was an art student at ENA, Servando was my professor for the class on color. He was a major influence on all his students. He was not a rigid professor who just taught you how to paint: he was a master who taught technique, offered theoretical elements, trained you to see color. He would choose his students, his group, and his classes were sui generis, very typical, very beautiful.

He did not always stay in his studio, but took walks with us to the Country Club. All the original gardens, with exotic ornamental plants, were still there, and Servando took us so we could learn to see the color of nature. He said: “Choose a color range of the plants. As you can see, there are various types of crotons, with fuchsia, violet, and red shades; others are ochre, green, and yellow, and all of them in different tonalities.

Use that spectrum to color the paintings; that is, decompose nature’s colors in a painting.” That is what he did: he used those shades to paint in every period. That is why his paintings are so refreshing. He had to leave the school because of a problem, but he left an indelible mark on the students. Servando’s beautiful influence permitted many to bring out the professor’s essence in their painting.

I started to work at the museum107 in 1972 and restored many of Servando’s canvases. I even discovered some I had never seen that came from private collectors. That was how I came to know many of his works. Antonia Eiriz, another great professor, once said to me: “I knew you would be a great restorer, because you were never afraid of color.” And I told her I didn’t fear color because Servando and she had taught me not to be afraid of it.

107 The National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana (MNBA).

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Together with his students (from left to right): Emilio Fernández de la Vega, Roger Ramírez, René León, Julio Velázquez, Victoria Fernández, Servando Cabrera, Cándida Alonso and Gilberto Frómeta, 1962

You must know the painter, to know the technique of the artist you are going to restore. If you don’t, it’s very probable that you will make mistakes, because you would be painting according to your point of view and not the painter’s. A bad restorer damages any painter’s work, in any period, and that’s a historical fact. It’s not something of this time or this country.

It is a universal practice today in the field of restoration to retain all the details of the original painting: the stretcher, the canvas, the nails.

Servando painted mostly with oils, and I have never seen any of the colors in his paintings fade when treated with water as happens with works by other painters of the same period, like Amelia, Portocarrero, Mijares, because they mixed

In the 1960s, neither teachers nor students had materials with which to work. We used whatever we could find. Servando would use canvas he had brought from Europe just as he would use local ones, or an old sheet… whatever, but he painted and joined canvases together. His stretchers were not professional either. There was no glue or priming materials, so white vinyl paint was used to prepare the canvases.

It’s true that many of his paintings deteriorated because of inadequate materials, incorrect preparation, or the tension of the canvas, but I forgive him everything. When they bring me a painting by Servando, they say: “I am bringing it to you because I know he is in you and you will never do anything that would damage his work, but you’ll restore it so that it will live on and you will respect his painting.”

There are imitations of Cabrera Moreno paintings going around.

In the 1970s, a student of his who lived in Camaguey started to copy his works and sold them to the Fondo de Bienes Culturales.

Works have to be carefully studied, including their date and physical condition, because paper oxidizes very easily. Paintings by Cuban artists are still being imitated, but a restorer can easily distinguish a copy from an original, at times because of something as simple as the smell of fresh materials. Also, a piece subjected to many restorations, with many overlays, may make you think it is a fake. I have seen badly deteriorated paintings by Servando that were restored with acrylics, and it makes them different, as if they were fakes.

He painted over his own canvases when he didn’t like what he had done before. That’s why restorers should check carefully for the transparency in his works using his same technique, his same colors.

Many students visited Servando’s home, while others didn’t dare go because they were afraid. As years went by, they understood there was much prejudice, and I believe, much envy, much jealousy from the other professors and the people who denigrated him, but Servando was so good that nobody paid attention to those things, although he did live through extremely hard times.

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oil with tempera. His artistic production went through various phases, some with more transparency and more impasto, and others in which the paint is more diluted: but it’s always his hand, his color, his very characteristic technique that is recognizable anywhere. Many of his paintings lost transparency when restored with acrylic, which leaves a compact, matt layer that changes the painting technique entirely.

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TESTIMONY BY

D ani e l Ví as , A FRIEND AND COLLECTOR OF SERVANDO’S WORK. He was the Cuban ambassador to the Republic of Libya

and to the Republic of Albania, and the administrator of the glassware shop El Bisel. Dated December 4, 2012.

I

met Servando when I worked in the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Raúl Roa García. Vice Minister Paco Chavarry (a fellow combatant from the Sierra Maestra struggle) introduced us. He had told Servando that my father had one of his paintings in his small collection.

I took him to see my painting and then he invited me to see his collection. From then on we were close friends, only interrupted by my missions abroad. Whenever I was back in Cuba, there was a new Servando painting in my home.

I returned for good in 1970 and became manager of the El Bisel glassware shop. I already knew about Servando’s situation after the absurd events at the National School of Art (ENA) and, during a visit, I told him he could count on me for anything he needed for his prolific and beautiful work. From then on, I was in charge of the search for stretchers, canvases, turpentine, glass for the frames, and transportation of his goods. I even had shelves made for his folk art collections and cases for his very large and beautiful fans called pericones.

Whatever was in my power, I facilitated for him with utmost pleasure.

Every day after I dealt with the work of the five brigades, I used to go to his home about eight in the morning. He would greet me very happily and we went to see Doña Margarita and his father, with whom I talked a lot. They “complained” to me about Servandito, over a cup of good tea his mother made.

Servando said that he needed these few moments I devoted to him to take a break and catch up on people and things.

My visits became a routine. He got up very early to paint in the patio, but he was always in the studio when I arrived and we began to chat. He told me about the detractors who tried to make his life miserable. He was strong, but because of his frail health, these stumbling blocks affected him.

He always told me how grateful he was for my help. He once told me: “Daniel, with these paintings I’m giving you, I am guaranteeing your old age...”

One day he asked me to deliver several paintings to some of his friends. He handed me the three paintings of “Che,” real masterpieces: one was for Raúl Roa, another for Paco Chavarry, and another one for me. I was moved by his deference.

Servando considered that my collection of his works was the most complete after his own. That is why he brought personalities of the film world to my home along with good friends like César Évora, among others. He always got on well with my mother and they exchanged plants and flowers. Whenever he went to the Film Studio, he would run over to my house, which was three blocks away.

He gave to his friends the works that were not sold at an exhibition in Grenoble, France. Paco Chavarry, Montesinos and I benefited. (I received El sacrificio (The Sacrifice), a triptych hanging today in the MNBA). He said that if he had given them to the museum, they would be placed in storage. And it was true.

When the Ministry of Culture allocated him a Lada, he was elated. He said that since he didn’t drive, I could take his car and he would call me when he needed it. He prepared a portfolio with some twenty beautiful female faces and “Guajiros” he intended to give to MNBA, perhaps in gratitude. But, when he showed them to me, he put aside two “Habaneras” (this was not frequent for him), and he dedicated them to me, to hang in my new office at Cubatur. He said he did it so, if some day I quit that job, I would have no difficulty in taking them with me. These two pieces and Nena, a portrait of my mother as a young woman, are kept by my nephew abroad, as part of his valuable collection.

The master’s behavior and my attitude towards him never changed. I was always proud of being his friend, confessor, and, at times, even his errand runner. I had more than 150 of his paintings hanging on my walls, and he gave me, without my asking, many more to give as gifts to doctors and relatives.

There was never self-interest between us, only a close friendship that, after his death, is still alive in my memory.

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Che, 1972 Ink on paper, 1,100 x 750 mm Museum of the City of Havana collection 235

THE LONG PATH OF NOSTALGIA

My visits became a habit

El sacrificio (The Sacrifice, triptic), 1968 Oil on canvas, 148 x 88 cm MNBA collection 236

237 THE LONG PATH OF NOSTALGIA

…an immortal man in Cuban visual arts INTERVIEW WITH M ar ta

Ji mé ne z , A FRIEND OF SERVANDO. She was a member of the March 13th Revolutionary Directorate and Cuban

ambassador to Switzerland and Denmark. Interview conducted on May 4, 2012

I

met Servando through Fayad Jamís. They were very good friends and I became a close friend of Servando. I have never met a more generous human being, such a good person, so open, a loyal friend. I believe he is immortal in Cuban art.

He worked at ENA and one day he was laid off. Why? Because he was a homosexual and made erotic paintings. He was left in a very difficult economic situation. I felt very sorry for him. He complained he didn’t have any money. This coincided with the tour President Osvaldo Dorticós made to Latin America to greet his counterparts. Since I worked in the Department of Cultural Relations, I was entrusted with the purchase of paintings to be presented as gifts. E ­ verything I bought

was from Servando, as a way of helping him, and because he was such a brilliant painter. Wherever one of his paintings appeared, it would be a credit for Cuba.

He was an excellent professor and that was why he was dismissed. From that moment on, it was difficult for him to get by, not because of the quality of his work, but because of prejudice. Servando’s generosity was unlimited. We had a mutual friend to whom he constantly gave paintings and he said to him: “The day you’re in financial difficulty, sell the paintings.”

Flores dulces para Marta Jiménez (Sweet Flowers for Marta Jiménez) is an example of his generosity. One day he announced: “I am going to draw you, to paint you.” He did and then said: “Look, this is love embracing you.”

Servando was a pioneer, a promoter, and a representative of Cuban art and culture. He did it spontaneously, not out of duty, but because it was inborn in him. He was like that, very generous, very active. And very much a Cuban. He loved this country dearly, otherwise he would have left in 1959 or 1960.

I was eager to protect him, so life would not hurt him.

But life hurt him very much. It must have been very difficult, for his disposition and his soul, to feel cast out from society, even when he had many friends. But he got by, and look at the results today. None of those who made his life unbearable enjoy a museum like this; it is really gorgeous.

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Flores dulces para Marta Jiménez (Sweet Flowers for Marta Jiménez), 1972 Oil on canvas, 136 x 85.5 cm Private collection

Marta Jiménez 238

THE LONG PATH OF NOSTALGIA

…such a good friend INTERVIEW WITH Natal i a

B o l ívar , AN ANTHROPOLOGIST FRIEND OF SERVANDO. She participated in the March 13th Revolutionary

Directorate. She was director of the MNBA, the Numismatic Museum, and the Napoleonic Museum. Interview conducted on July 9, 2012.

I

met Servando more than sixty years ago, when I was nineteen or twenty years old. While I was at the MNBA (until 1966), he never had problems, nor were there any between us. Servando and I have always adored each other.

He was an unconditional friend, and I am not saying this because he is dead, since I consider him my friend and still speak of him in the present tense. I remember him enormously.

Enrique Román was a close friend, and one day he came over to my home to find it full of very beautiful “heads”108

by Servando. They were even dedicated to me, because our friendship was very solid. Enrique asked me to give him a “head” as a present in exchange for a Servando painting he had in his garage that he didn’t want because it was erotic. I told him I would ask Servando and Servando urged me: “Give

him all the ‘heads’ he wants and get the painting. That was the first erotic I ever made.” And the erotic painting arrived here.

Servando was so noble and so good that whenever he went on a trip he would say: “Hey, Natalia, I am going to leave you 20 of my ‘heads.’ You may sell them for 50 or 100 pesos and keep the money for me.” He left me 10 or 20 “heads,” gave me the price and I sold them for him. When he was back, I reported: “Look, I only had to use 20 pesos to fix something.”

And he answered: “No, keep the money.” He was like that.

I did not attend his wake because I was the publicist for the National Theater and the Zarzuela Anthology was being staged. When Servando heard that the anthology would be presented, he called and said: “Hey, Nata, I want to go. Are you going?” I answered: “I have to be here anyhow.” Servando asked me to pick him up and I told him to be ready at 6 p.m. the next day. When I arrived at the theater at eight in the morning, Begoña’s call came: “Natalia, Servando has just died. We are going to the funeral parlor. He has been there for two hours.”

I said: “I’m not going. I can’t stand it, really.” Can you imagine? A guy that is so excited about something and suddenly he’s dead, so young and full of life, so cultured and such a good friend…

Natalia Bolívar and Servando Cabrera at the opening of the exhibit Habanera Tú, 1975

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108 The reference is to the “Habaneras.”

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Mujer en verde (Woman in Green), 1960 Plaka on cardboard, 1,040 x 790 mm Private collection

241 THE LONG PATH OF NOSTALGIA

…he answered as an artist: creating his best art…

TESTIMONY BY Al e jandro

M o nte s i no s , A FRIEND AND PUPIL OF SERVANDO.

Dated February 1st, 2013.

O

f the projects and initiatives to comemorate Servando’s 90th birthday, the most important for me is the publication of this book devoted to his life and work.

Its publication will open a door, will provoke, will attract other opinions and more information, it will put things in their right place. The works he made abroad, which we have never seen, will be found. Anyway, this is a beginning.

Servando was a Gemini and he loved being one. I don’t think he believed very much in the zodiac, but astrology was fashionable at the time and it always turned up in conversation; it was a way to justify an event or someone’s nature. For him it was just that: a way of being as he wanted to be. He enjoyed pretending to be contradictory, since this allowed him to take a 180 degree turn and surprise us all. His dual zodiac sign suited him, since it sheltered contrasts and contradiction.

Besides, there are many artists under that sign, at least some admired by Servando. Being Gemini, he felt he was in good company.

Contradiction and duality did not reach the essence of his life. He was a Gemini with class awareness. Not even in his worst moments, in his crises, did he deny himself or relinquish his essence. He never stopped being an artist and neither did he retreat from his work, his preferences, his friends. He made no concessions: he did not negotiate his opinions… When he said: “I’m on my way,” he was a steamroller.

When I met Servando, I was a nine-year-old kid. My mother took me to the Havana Botanical Gardens, where a professor from San Alejandro offered classes on Sunday mornings. One day a man wearing a guayabera arrived and María Luisa, the teacher, greeted him and asked me to touch him so his talent would be transferred to me. Since I was interested in gym, I thought this had to do with biceps, triceps… so I went to him and gave him a punch. I remember the aversion on that man’s face. This must have taken place in 1963 or 1964, before his first heart attack. I didn’t see him again until I was 16 years old. We went to eat at La Roca to celebrate the birthday of Eduardo Izquierdo, a mutual friend. That night I visited his home for the first time.

The physical image of a man says a lot about him and Servando was discretion itself. A conventional haircut, light colored shirts with no striking prints, short or long sleeves depending on the temperature; at times, he wore a guayabera shirt. I do not remember him wearing jeans or paying attention 242

to fashions he would have easily have access to in his continuous comings and goings abroad. But he did have many moccasins and those ankle boots so much in vogue in the 1970s that imitated suede with the soles stitched on the outside.

He was very sober, much the gentleman, with a sense of humor at times rather caustic and ironical. He was very neat and tidy, and heavily perfumed with cologne. I never saw him uncombed or unshaved.

I think he didn’t like his body very much, because it was the antithesis of his aesthetic model: his painting bears witness to his admiration for beautiful, strong, and dynamic things. What confirms his dissatisfaction with his body image was the painstaking care he took not to make it evident, so that it wouldn’t be noticed. There was a shyness about it.

Something else: Servando took guaguas.109 You would frequently find him on the 64, the 212, or the 81 buses, the ones that covered the 19th street route, and, less often, he took bus No. 30, because it went down 13th street and its stop was farther from his home. A thousand times we met at the bus stop by the Loipa110 when he left the Cinemateca. Later he received more than enough offers to give him a ride, but he did take many buses, and showed much agility in riding buses as crowded as they are today.

At the time, those who traveled abroad returned like camels, loaded with trunks and bags filled with all the clothes, shoes, products, and objects they could find and could carry.

Servando also returned with many suitcases and bags. The surprise came when he unpacked. The bags were like magician hats. Anything might come out of them: tiny terra-cotta bulls, folk furniture, tools, toys, puppets, records, books… Few of those wonders would have been considered “useful” by an ordinary person. Each object was intended for a given place in the house: a wall, a corner, a piece of furniture… Clothes? The same ones he had packed for the trip.

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Columna humana No. 2 (Human Column No. 2), c. 1966 Oil on canvas, 147 x 98 cm Private collection

109 “Guagua” is the Cuban slang for bus.

110 A café on 23rd street, Vedado, very popular in the 1970s.

Arriving gave him a special pleasure, perhaps two. In addition to being back to his everyday life, he loved to show us his newly acquired treasures: the little straw donkey he had bought in some region in Spain; a mosaic taken from a wall of some street; the recently restored recording of an old flamenco singer; the Beatles’ latest album; a book on a painter we had never heard of; the catalogue of an important exhibition; an article on an outstanding film… well, he loved to fill our hard drive.

His other pleasure was to place his new acquisitions in his home. I enjoyed that less, because placing a piece at times required moving around everything on a wall. His sense of

design made him arrange the walls as if they were paintings.

Once I asked him how he sorted out so many and such different things and he said he merged them as if composing a Mondrian, playing with vertical and horizontal straight lines, and using the spaces and relationships they create.

Entering into Servando’s home was like having a conversation with him. His folk art collection, was very much a part of him. If you asked him about a piece, he would tell you who had sold it to him and how, when he bought it, where he was at what moment. Some of his collection was exhibited on San Rafael Street, with the participation of Casa de las Américas. I don’t recall the date, but I do remember that all the shop windows on that street were full of folk art. At the time, the Colonial Art Museum had not been opened. This was a project 244

with which he had a special link, since he had donated part of the lighting system and showcases.

His capacity to teach without you realizing it was something that always caught my attention. I learned much about painting and art from him, but I cannot say he ever gave me a formal lesson.

During the third year at ENA, we began to work with oils. He recommended that I do an exercise to check the transparency of the material and determine how the superimposition of several colors transformed and enriched the palette.

Another day he advised me to always resort to geometrical forms, the simplest ones. “See your paintings as geometrical

Con plomo en la sangre (With Lead in the Blood), 1971 Oil on canvas, 91 x 204 cm Private collection

spaces and forms; nuances and details come later.” I do not remember any other lesson in the formal sense of the word.

You learned by listening and looking, by talking; you learned by asking questions and observing him, not because he played the role of a teacher.

To see Servando paint was a privilege. At times it was difficult for him to move the canvases, because his paintings were very large, and he asked us to help place them where he was going to work. He never stopped working, every day, with military discipline. He painted because he needed to paint and draw. It had nothing to do with selling or not selling, giving

away or not giving away. It was like breathing for him. He has been criticized for giving away too many paintings. Some say this lowered the value of his production. I think it did not.

He rarely used models. He generally depicted a human figure on the basis of his mastery of it. Sometimes he took pictures, common images from magazines, and pieced together fragments, played with photography to compose paintings… This was not a method, but rather a visual exercise. One afternoon, he was working with a photo of a film that contained fragments of human bodies. He showed me one and said: “It is already a painting, but if I painted it, I would take this off.” I warned him it was part of a leg, and he answered: “He needs a leg to walk, but it damages the composition. So I would take it away… A painting is a reality in itself and everything that doesn’t add to it, damages it.”

There were few places in Havana with the ambiance of his home. You could listen to music you knew existed, but had never heard. I’m sure that is where most of us learned about the Beatles, the Supremes, everything that was happening at the time. Sometimes we went to the Teatro Estudio, or Servando asked Alfredo Guevara to screen a film he wanted us to see.

If he considered you to be a cultured person, he opened his

Los Géminis no tienen tiempo (Geminis Don’t Have Time), 1969 Oil on canvas, 119.4 x 191 cm MBSCM collection

doors for you, whether you were a photographer, a painter, a sculptor, or simply a student.

He was a very good teacher and, if he thought you had talent, he respected you as if you were the most important artist in Cuba. Our relationship with him was one of great respect. That was why it must have been very hard for him when he learned that Mario Hidalgo111 had told us that students were not allowed to visit an artist named Servando Cabrera Moreno.

The attacks on him by these people backfired. He was the winner and, without making concessions, compromising his integrity, or renouncing his identity, he ended up much stronger and more admired. It was very painful and bitter for him, because he had been honest and consistent with his ideas. He was very transparent, so nobody could say they were

111 Mario Hidalgo was the director of ENA at the time.

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unaware of his sexual preference. Having that orientation, he had become who he was because of his artistic and personal merits. Also, his art had always dealt with the injustices in the country before 1959, when it was difficult and dangerous, and this was something that many of those who attacked him were in no position to say they had done. If someone thought he would turn his back on what he had defended before and deny it, Servando would not play the game. He made no scandal and never posed as a victim. He was confident in his beliefs and above the despicable acts that characterized the times. He knocked on the right doors; he spoke with whom he should have spoken; he listened to the wise, and answered as an artist: creating his best works, pouring his pain into his art.

When that happened, I was not old enough to understand what he must have felt, but now I do. I was about to finish my studies at the ENA and tried, as many others did, to demonstrate my friendship. One Saturday, when I left school, I called him. He asked me to meet him at the Cinemateca to see a film —I don’t remember the name. After we saw it, we went to the No. 81 bus stop on Zapata Street, because it was more discreet than the one by Loipa. There he told me that I should visit him less frequently to avoid problems, and that he would go on painting, but wanted to be out of sight for awhile.

He said that I could call him, but I could only see him when he allowed it, and that it would be better not to mention his name at school, and much less to defend him. Actually he was protecting me… us. At the same time, he was avoiding an indiscretion or a malicious manipulation of our friendship.

When things returned to normal, projects, work proposals, and orders began to reappear, which he enjoyed very much. He did not seek revenge. He accepted it as natural.

Trying to understand the opinions and rumors surrounding Servando, one might think that many people lie or invent stories, but I believe this variety of images, of points of view, have to do with the moment in which those telling them came to know him. In his life, as in that of every human being, there were drastic changes, incomprehensible turns, strange decisions…

Because of the convulsive times in which he lived and the incidents coloring his existence, as well as the fact that he guarded his private life conscientiously, it’s logical that the information reaching us would be contradictory and vague. To this we must add that the first attempts to delve deeply into his life took place quite a long time after his death, with no relatives around to clarify certain things, and no impartial and abundant documentation. Many of the people close to him are no longer here, or are not close, or don’t want to address certain topics. His life was full of silent spaces and, at the same time, of myths. He tried to keep his personal life hidden from gossipmongers interested in famous figures, but many legends emerged around him. So many that at times he was more talked about because of them than because of his art.

He could not have foreseen his death. He was actually at a good moment and was taking good care of himself. He was beginning to get a second wind and had thousands of plans. He was preparing to build an addition on top of his house, around his sister’s roof. He had already designed the space, with the light required to paint, with insulation, and the atmosphere he wanted. He even told me he was going to make 365 erotic drawings on Ingres paper of various colors for a large wall. The afternoon before his death, I called him to say I had found violet colored Ingres paper, which was difficult to get at the time. We had it in the warehouse, and I had asked for a sample so he could decide, but since I had to go to Sancti Spíritus the following afternoon, I didn’t want to wait until I got back to tell him the good news, so I called him. There was nothing special about our conversation. He only said that when I got back, we would meet to tell me something… I never knew what it was. This makes me think that he wasn’t anticipating death anywhere in the near future.

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El vaivén de las luces violetas (Violet Lights Come and Go), 1981 Oil on canvas, 148.5 x 99 cm MBSCM collection 246

…very receptive and human INTERVIEW WITH Evi di o

Pe rdo mo Ro drígu ez , COSTUME DESIGNER, A STUDENT AND PERSONAL FRIEND OF SERVANDO.

Made on May 4, 2012.

W

hen I was in the eighth grade, I applied to ENA. I took the exams and was accepted. I was in a group with Cosme Proenza, Rogelio López Marín, and others. The classes were wonderful. I studied painting and discovered the world in that school.

Drawing was taught by Alpízar, and color and collage

by Antonia Eiriz. She was very communicative in her classes and passed on her enthusiasm to us. In the second year I had to go before a disciplinary council together with other students. We were all suspended for a year as a penalty, but since I hadn’t done anything, I decided to quit and go back to high school.

I met Servando after I left art school. José Villa and Alejandro Montesinos took me to his home. They said it would

Evidio with his portrait painted by Servando in 1972 Oil on canvas, 68 x 96 cm Private collection 248

Evidio with Servando Cabrera Sánchez at the exhibit Habanera tú, Galería de La Habana, 1975

be a shame to waste my great talent and told Servando what had happened to me. He was very receptive and human. I lived in San Antonio de los Baños and traveled the long distance to the school in Víbora, in Havana. When I finished, I was accepted at the university to study History of Art. I applied for a scholarship, but this took time, so I had to travel back and forth for an entire year. I passed the exams, and I would have continued going back and forth, but Servando offered to let me to stay in his home and devote my time to my studies.

He was a correct person, very methodical, demanding, and a little argumentative. He didn’t have a studio. He organized the decoration of the entire house. He was up at 7:00 a.m. and, in the morning he would paint with oils on canvas on the terrace with natural light. He took a shower and had lunch, then took a nap until 3:00 p.m. and, in the afternoon he made drawings which he kept in a wooden folder. Barragán mounted the paintings and made the stretchers. Servando painted sitting on a stool. He used to eat a big lunch and, in the evening, only had coffee and milk. He almost always wore white or pastel colored shirts, either pink or blue. He had a heart condition and saw Dr. Ada Kourí, who was a cardiologist.

You had to phone before visiting him. He didn’t like to have the house full of people who had nothing to do with each other. He was very good at compartmentalizing visits. I was very respectful: if the visits were for him, I didn’t have to be there and stayed upstairs. I didn’t need to ask for anything in the house.

He even gave me money for my expenses. I was very modest and the family had complete confidence in me.

Servando seemed to have a strained relationship with his sister, but deep down he loved his family very much. I was not Servando’s lover, but I did sit as a model. Our relationship

Nacida en mayo (Born in May, portrait of Evidio’s mother), 1975 Oil on canvas, 80 x 90.5 cm Private collection

was very close, like family. He took me in as a nephew or a son; he gave me chores like dusting the ceramics, whitewashing low walls, watering the plants, mounting the stretchers, and taking care of the three precious cats in the house. I helped him identify the folk art pieces with labels stating their country of origin.

He had a wonderful record collection of Spanish folklore, which is how I came to know Conchita Piquer and Imperio Argentina, Hollywood musicals, and American musicals in general.

There are two paintings I love very much. One is a portrait of my mother he painted from a picture of her, and the other is an atypical portrait, in profile, very much turpentined, of me when I returned from the sugar cane harvest. I lived in his home; I had the satisfaction of watching him do ink drawings, in continuous lines, of seeing how clean his strokes were,

of helping him sew flour sacks together when he had no canvas. I watched him paint El Moncada, El matorral (The Thicket), the famous Che, and the guerillas for the Cuban Council of State, and Sevilla siempre Sevilla (Seville Always Seville).

I graduated in 1977 and began working in San JosĂŠ de las Lajas as the director of the Casa de Cultura. Then our emotional relationship drifted apart, broken off because of my work, but I always called him, just in case he needed something. If I had a chance, I went to see him, but things were not as they used to be.

Despite everything they did to him, he never mentioned anything to me. The only reference I have was hearing him say that Marta Arjona hated him: that was the only bad thing he said to me, if we can consider it bad. His death was a terrible blow. I find it so wonderful that this book about Servando is being made.

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The Miró Prize TESTIMONY BY OUTSTANDING PAINTER To más

Sán ch ez , GRADUATE FROM THE NATIONAL ART SCHOOL (ENA) IN 1970.

Dated March 7, 2013.

I

n 1980, when I was included in the group of Cuban artists that would take part in the 19th Joan Miró International Prize for Drawing, Servando Cabrera Moreno showed great interest. I wasn’t too confident, because until then I had focused on painting and engraving, never on drawing as an independent medium.

Servando had won an honorable mention in the 1969 Miró competition, when he actually deserved first prize. It seems that some members of the jury allowed political rather than aesthetic issues to influence their decision. His certificate of mention had a dedication by Joan Miró, which was unusual, a gesture with which the great Catalan artist acknowledged the extraordinary merit of our master.

When in July 1980 I was granted the Joan Miró prize, the happiness of my friend and professor was as if he were the one awarded. He immediately came to congratulate me with a hug and called all our common friends to tell them the news.

The rules of the competition included that the winner would hold an exhibition at the Joan Miró Foundation the following year. In 1981, when I was in Barcelona for my personal exhibition at the Joan Miró Foundation, the deputy director, Luis Bosch, showed me Servando’s drawing in his office, and said he thought he should have won first prize. Servando, however, was very happy with his mention and the certificate with Miró’s dedication.

Servando followed the development of my work during the entire year and, before I left for Barcelona, he handed me some letters for his friends and relatives, in which he recommended me and asked them to give me the same support and care they would give him. When I returned, I immediately went to see him to deliver some presents and letters. He died s­ hortly after.

Although Servando was not directly my professor, his example as a self-assured artist with strong convictions, his love for world and national culture, for our values and roots, and his respect for the art of others, were significant influences on my career.

What inspired me most were his altruism and generosity. His art is ever present, inspiring us. He is still a friend, always accessible somewhere, some place.

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Columna humana 8 (Human Column 8), 1967 Oil on canvas, 140 x 121 cm Private collection Written on the back of the canvas: “To Lázaro Blanco, Lázaro Enríquez, Eduardo Izquierdo, Enrique Martínez, Raúl Piña, Jorge Rodríguez, Tomás Sánchez, José Villa. My support for everyone’s artistic development in friendship from behind the scenes 1967” 250

TOMÁS SÁNCHEZ Crucifixión (Crucifixion), 1976 Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 90 cm MBSCM collection

Protecting his art INTERVIEW WITH M ar í a

Te re sa Igl e s i as Álvarez , MAIN SPECIALIST OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CULTURAL HERITAGE.

Margarita Moreno Alcázar, Margarita Cabrera Moreno and Servando Cabrera Sánchez

F

ollowing orders by Marta Arjona, on the afternoon of September 30, 1981, Enrique Capablanca and I went to Servando’s home to meet with Margarita Cabrera Moreno (Margot), and her husband Ricardo, to discuss the protection of his works. The house was already besieged by people who claimed pieces by the master, saying he had promised them paintings, or that the works were theirs but they hadn’t come for them yet.

Together with Servando’s family, who still resided in the house, it was decided to take a protective measure: the Cultural Property Registry was to seal the two entrances, the main and side doors, that had access to the street. There

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would only be inside communication. The CDR,112 the neighborhood watch, was approached to guard the house.

Some days later, the Registry removed the seals and my meetings with Margarita Moreno, Servando’s mother, continued. Servando’s family cooperated fully in the preservation of the cultural property. I frequently went to talk with them and,

112 Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR): Neighborhood organization created in 1960 to encourage people to defend the principles of the Revolution.

Un día de vida para Isabel (A Day of Life for Isabel, Servando’s aunt and godmother), 1981 Oil on canvas, 98 x 129 cm MBSCM collection

gradually, Margarita showed me the various parts of the house and its assets.

Nely Brito, director of the National Registry of Cultural Properties, conducted the inventory with the family’s authorization. It was begun in 1982: manuscript in ink and pencil was made that specified everything on every wall in the house; some time later, the inventory of photography and works of art was added.

Margot, the last potential heir, died in 1991. In this situation, conversations began with Ricardo on a potential purchase of the collection. Negotiations ended on September

1994 and the pieces were kept in safe storage, while waiting for an appropriate building to make a museum for Servando. The participation of Alfredo Guevara and Marta Arjona was a determining factor in this process.

Marta arranged for specialized personnel from Heritage, Registry, and the Ministry of the Interior to guarantee the security, conservation, restoration, and inventory of the hundreds of objects. Amelia Marrero, Niurka Cruz, Luis Almeida, Raúl Colón, and I worked on it and, of course José A. Menéndez, at the time the director of the Cultural Property Registry.

Shortly after the collection was moved, Ricardo died.

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WHAT BELONGS TO US

Lo que nos pertenece (What Belongs to Us), 1981 Oil on canvas, 108 x 178 cm MBSCM collection

NEIDA PEÑALVER DÍAZ113

A Collection, a Mansion,

a Museum

A

rt, culture in the broadest sense, and collecting were some of Servando Cabrera Moreno’s passions. His legacy is contained in them and goes beyond his prolific body of work or his transcendence in contemporary art. His enormous lifelong interest in the conservation, inventory, and dedicated selection of folk art pieces, the preservation of his work in almost all his creative periods, and the existence of works signed by several of his contemporaries, make the extraordinary collection stored in his home an example of significant heritage and museological value.

Servando Cabrera died on September 30, 1981. Shortly after his death, the National Heritage Directorate, aware of the need to preserve not only his historical memory, but also his material legacy, began talks with the painter’s family in order to safeguard his assets. In 1982-1983, a group of experts made an inventory and photographed the pieces. The last of Servando’s direct heirs, Margarita Cabrera, died in 1991, due to a lingering illness. After long negotiations, the purchase of the collection by the State was completed in 1994 and deposited in secure storage for a decade, waiting for the creation of a specialized museum

113 A History graduate, she worked in the National Center for Conservation, Restoration and Museology (CENCREM) between 2007 and 2011. She is now a museologist in the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library.

114 On July 14, 1995, by resolution of Armando Hart Dávalos, Minister of Culture at the time, the National Heritage Directorate closed and the National Council of Cultural Heritage (CNPC) was created.

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where they could be exhibited. Alfredo Guevara, a close friend of the artist, and Marta Arjona, who at the time headed the National Council of Cultural Heritage,114 sponsored the project.

Cabrera Moreno’s collection was kept almost complete. Made up of paintings and drawings from several of his creative periods, it also includes pieces by other artist friends, who set transcendental trends and styles for Cuban and international art, such as Antonia Eiriz, Wifredo Lam, Amelia Peláez, Tomás Sánchez and Antonio Saura, among many others. It also includes decorative art pieces and an excellent sample of international folk art.

A residence on Avenida Paseo, number 304, built in 1912 for a Cuban family, was chosen for the Servando Cabrera

Servando Cabrera’s home, 1983

Moreno Museum and Library. The splendid eclectic mansion was bought at an auction in 1922 by the well-known Italian marble dealer Jose Pennino Barbato and named Villa Lita, after his wife, Emmanuela Salmoiraghi Pandini. It’s a good example of the architectural movement that characterized constructions influenced by an American bourgeois lifestyle of that period, combining elements of classical, art nouveau, and colonial architecture. Between 1922 and 1926 it was rented by Dr. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Quesada, who, in 1933, became president of the Republic. The history and characteristics of the building made it an interesting setting for Servando’s collections and body of work, although the artist had no relationship with it at all.

Exterior of the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library (MBSCM)

Interiors of the MBSCM

Small changes and conversions were necessary to turn the residence into a museum, with the fundamental premise of achieving fitting exhibition contexts for Cabrera Moreno’s collections. Each spot was arranged with a simple and attractive museological design, preserving, in essence, the original characteristics of the building. Nine rooms where visitors can approach the environment in which the painter lived; admire his works; and interact with other artistic creations from other periods are a tribute to Servando’s interest in promoting art. In practice, these spaces are not static; they adjust to the specificities of permanent and temporary exhibitions.

The old coach house was converted into a library, where specialized information on universal and Latin American art is archived. Contemporary Cuban art is emphasized in the Antonia Eiriz Hall, named in honor to the renowned Havana artist, who was a friend of Servando. This space, mainly used for research, contains documents on painting, drawing, sculpture, engraving, photography, cinema, dance, music, all facets of art history, theory, criticism, cultural heritage, architecture, restoration, and museology, as well as other important reference materials. It also houses Cabrera Moreno’s personal bibliographic collection, which includes a wealth of manuscripts, books, magazines, catalogues, and travel guides. It is also the depository of a significant part of the personal library of Cuban painter Amelia Peláez, donated after the founding of the museum.

Architect José Antonio Choy was commissioned to design and oversee the only addition to the residence, a storage area for art works. It is complemented by a Sculpture Garden, conceived for the temporary display of contemporary sculptures, but so far the exhibition has been permanent.

The relocation of the collection to the mansion on Avenida Paseo ended in 260

Permanent exhibition rooms

Patio de las Esculturas (Sculptures Yard)

SERVANDO CABRERA MORENO MUSEUM AND LIBRARY (MBSCM) Director: Lourdes Álvarez

Library Deputy Director: Marlene González

Museum Deputy Director: Rosemary Rodríguez

Librarians: Norma González Dolly Hernández Yenisey Redonavich

Museologists: Claudia González Neida Peñalver Archives and Inventory: Patricia Sera Curator and Restoration: Alexander Fernández Public Relations: Lorayne Valdés

Administratation: Raúl Vichot

WHAT BELONGS TO US

2004. On January 26, 2007, the MBSCM, one of the few theme museums under the National Heritage System, opened its doors to the public. It is the only national monographic museum to contain such a complete exhibition and documentary collection dedicated to this great master of Cuban visual art.

Besides exhibiting and promoting Cabrera Moreno’s legacy and works, the museum is in charge of research, restoration, and inventory of the collection. It also offers specialized and guided visits, exhibitions, children’s workshops, lectures, and other activities in collaboration with various institutions and community projects. The cultural and educational outreach programs are well known, and have an influence on the artistic, cultural, and aesthetic awareness of the public. Theme exhibitions on the work and legacy surrounding Servando contribute to a better understanding of the dynamism and richness of his collections.

The space has captured the essence of Servando Cabrera Moreno; the artist, the master, the promoter of cultural events, the lover of arts, immortalized in his works and his collections

LEONOR DE LA CONCEPCIÓN TURIÑO ÁGUILA115

Passions

of a Traveler*

I

f the monographs, articles, and essays devoted to Servando Cabrera Moreno are not enough for a full understanding of his art, much less has been written about his vast folk art collection.116 Their place in the life of the man/ artist and their influence on his creativity are worthy of consideration when appraising him. The collection is also an important adjunct to other private collections in Cuba and a testimony of the traditions and habits of diverse peoples.

When talking about Cabrera Moreno as a collector, we must take into account his extensive trips to the Americas and Europe, since these allowed him to gradually develop his eclectic collection in a unique way. His journeys to towns on the North American continent gave way to many others, and each of them had a special meaning for the development of the artist’s sensibility, and contributed to the maturity of his aesthetic discourse.

Tea set Talavera de Puebla, Mexico

262

Servando in Puebla, Mexico

He was able to collect a great many representative samples from the important areas of handcraft production in Mexico. Talavera de Puebla, a name deriving from Talavera de la Reina in Spain, produces magnificent earthenware. The pieces in cobalt blue on white, a style of majolica with a refined finish and Asian origins, stand out next to dinner sets with warmer colors and floral motifs from the famous Uruarte workshops.

Plate Tonalá, Jalisco, Mexico Tree of life Mexico

Duck Tonalá, Jalisco, Mexico

Mermaid Coyotepec, Oaxaca, Mexico

The “trees of life,” beautiful pieces in polychrome clay from Metepec and Izucar de Matamoros, in the states of Mexico and Puebla, respectively, show biblical passages that illustrate the story of the creation. The decorated lacquers from Pátzcuaro, the exquisite glazed and polished ceramics from Tonalá, the black clay figures from Oaxaca, the amusing trapeze artists from Jalisco, the cardboard dolls from ­Guanajuato…

* From “Una página bella en la vida” (A Beautiful Page from Life), unpublished text by the author.

115 History of Art graduate. She worked as a museologist in charge

Owl Tonalá, Jalisco, México

of the folk art collection between 2007 and 2011. Curator of the exhibitions México popular (Popular Mexico), Pasiones de un viajero (Passions of a Traveler), Una devoción compartida (Shared Devotion), Jugar con arte (Playing with Art), Si vas a comer espera por Servando (If You Are Going to Eat, Wait for Servando) and Cerca del mar y del monte (Near the Sea and the Mountains).

116 71.8% of the more than 1,557 folk art pieces are ceramics. Cabrera

Moreno’s collections, with more than 5,000 pieces, include visual and decorative arts, documents, illustrations, and others. Servando placed tremendous importance on his acquisitions, brought back with him or shipped to Havana; he always decided where each piece should reside in his home.

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Barcelos rooster Minho, Portugal

Altarpiece Ayacucho, Peru

a nearly complete representation of Mexican handcrafts treasured by Servando.

Of the subset of Latin American pieces, the Ayacuchan altarpieces from Peru, are among the most highly prized art expressions in the world, thanks to the superbly skilled craftsmen from that area. The top of the wooden box is usually a carved triangle symbolizing a hill, while the doors, decorated with flower motifs, open to show a magical world of characters.

The most fruitful of Servando’s trips to Europe were those to the Iberian Peninsula. In Portugal, in the region of the Minho, he bought the famous Barcelos rooster. The ceramic nativity scene from Estremoz was typical because of its color and the realistic way in which it represents the manger. The whistles shaped like horsemen, little soldiers, and musicians, are striking because of their formal characteristics. They are attributed to ceramist Domingos Goncalves (who died in 1995). Goncalves, together with Rosa Ramalho,117 were the 117 Local potter who created the Barcelos ceramic style in the 1950s and developed the characteristic yellow dots and dramatic figures with strong, almost pure tonalities.

118 Álbaro, according to the classifications in the Alcora Museum. In all other places it is spelled with a “v”.

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Pot Barcelos, Portugal

outstanding Portuguese exponents of this style in the mid 20th century.

Portugal was not the most visited country by Servando.

Spain, where several emblematic ceramic workshops still ­existed, was the epicenter of his European trips, the place from which he departed and returned over and over, in routes as crucial to widening his artistic and personal horizons as to increasing his collection.

The expertise accumulated for more than five centuries can be appreciated in the renowned handcraft production from Talavera de la Reina. An outstanding dinner set, with flower and animal motifs in cobalt blue, is catalogued in the Ruiz de Luna series, whose production (1908-1960) recovered forms and themes from the Renaissance and Baroque Talaveran tradition. These pieces are always signed with the name of the potter’s workshop or with a black half moon. Following the models of the famous Alcora workshops, we find a plate belonging to a polychrome series called “del chaparro”, derived from the original design of the Álbaro118 (or Álvaro) style. The decorative motifs exhibit a bridge, a river, and a tree.

Plates Talavera de la Reina, Toledo, Spain

Tea set Talavera de la Reina, Toledo, Spain

265

Cuervera de Chinchilla Albacete, Spain

Maja pot Cuerva, Toledo, Spain

The province of Toledo contributed one of the most remarkable pieces of Castilian-Manchegan folk ceramic: an old “maja pot” made in the historic pottery center of Cuerva. The name refers to a type of profusely decorated vase that was usually given as a wedding present, also known as “bride’s” vase. Another Manchegan piece that must be mentioned is the cuervera. Typical of Chinchilla, in the Albacete province: a glazed clay bowl with two small handles is used to prepare cuerva, a nice refreshing drink typical of the area. It sits on a small, low-rimmed ceramic base called a “puesto” or “vasera”. From their varied decoration, Servando chose one that is rather sober, finely finished Inkwell with greenish tones.

Talavera de la Reina, The Castilian city of Cuenca is Toledo, Spain an important handcraft-producing center. Its best-known pieces are the Iberian bull and the glazed ceramic hanging houses. The slender pitchers with one handle, from Priego, are identifiable by the brown color and reddish decoration based on spirals and branches between well-defined horizontal rings. Their motifs are very similar to those of the ashy white pitchers with high spouts and wide handles the artist bought from the neighboring Mota del 266

WHAT BELONGS TO US

Bed Warmer Cuenca, Spain

Plate Manises, Valencia, Spain

Cuervo pottery center. Fascinating are the bed-warmers: elongated earthenware containers with a hole in the middle for filling with hot water before placing it in the bed.

In Valencia, Cabrera Moreno visited workshops and added beautiful pieces to his collection. Some feature ceramics with metallic reflections, a style imported by Andalusian Muslims. A set of dishes, whose origin is impossible to accurately certify, is identifiable by the decoration and color, which allow us to place it within the Manises and Paterna production. These important centers had more than a hundred factories at a time when the decadence of Andalusian ceramics was becoming evident even though foreign demand was still strong. The dinner set shows a recurrence of decorative motifs used between the 14th and 16th centuries with an outstanding Gothic-Mudejar character.

Servando’s passion for Seville is evident in the Andalusian pieces he was able to gather. The beautiful ceramic altarpiece with the image of Our Lady of Hope comes from the

Pot Cuenca, Spain

267

Plant hanger Santa Ana, Triana, Sevilla, Spain

Retablo: Our Lady of Hope Santa Ana, Sevilla, Spain

Santa Ana workshops. The decoration of two hanging flowerpots and a dish decorated in cobalt blue on a white background are based on ornamental motifs from the 16th and 17th centuries. Birds and quadrupeds appear in the pieces, painted with abundant yellow, ochre, and green or cobalt blue. Their origin can be traced to the Triana neighborhood, which, next to the Guadalquivir River, on the other bank of the historic downtown, has been the most important production center in Seville since Roman times.

Plate Santa Ana, Triana, Seville

119 Thus called because the most important potters gathered at the

factory door. It dates back to the first half of the 16th century.

268

Fajalauza119 ceramics from Granada also found their way into Servando’s luggage. Just by looking at the diverse plates, the bowl, and the vase with six spouts, also called a “carnation” vase, one can imagine the attraction he felt for the production from Granada. All these pieces exhibited the characteristic traits that, until approximately 1975, the coarse and popular crockery of the Nazari tradition maintained: glaze with minimal tin; green or grayish blue colors; still life motifs, especially pomegranates, birds and heraldic motifs, and complicated naturalist decorations, linked to the architectural styles of the area.

The handcrafts from Almeria, with bluish and greenish colors, visually distinguish Nijar ceramics. This typical whitewashed Andalusian town offered a large production with a peculiarly attractive technique. Its most distinctive feature was the “chinado”: dripping bluish oxides that spread or dissemi-

WHAT BELONGS TO US

“Carnation” vase Fajalauza, Granada, Andalusia, Spain

Accitan Jar Guadix, Andalusia, Spain

nate on surfaces and edges. In Servando’s times, some traditional workshops were still open (some next to the famous cave dwellings of the municipality) enabling him to acquire a couple of well-made small bowls.

Other prestigious pottery centers in the province joined the list of acquisitions with unquestionably beautiful pieces: a typical Sorbas rooster, a glazed reddish clay bowl with sparse decoration in Albox white, and a four-spouted pitcher from Alhabia. In La Rambla, in the municipality of Cordoba, the artist enjoyed a great variety of four-spouted pitchers, flowerpots, jars, drinking jugs, and moneyboxes.

Bailén, Andújar, and Úbeda workshops are the most famous in Jaen. The attractive bright and colorful horsemen-whistles, the bull-shaped and pig-shaped pitchers, and the so-called “grotesque” pitchers, with a series of pieces with handles one on top of the other, are the main shapes of Andújar’s production. Úbeda has a large repertoire of ceramics, always with their peculiar dark and brilliant green, with brown and black shades.

Salvatierra de los Barros is the most representative and prolific ceramics center in Extremadura. Its name refers to the richness of its reddish clay. When Servando visited, it had the 269

largest number of workshops in the country and almost all of them worked in a traditional manner. The pieces, made on a potter’s wheel, were decorated with curved lines achieved with a fine stone from the Guadiana River, constantly moistened, at times with the tongue. An elegant finish and lustrous polish was achieved by passing a dry finger over the lines. The most frequently used shape is the pitcher.

The production of Spanish ceramics is primarily linked with water and fire. The first refers to containers for the transportation, storage, and consumption of water, a highly prized liquid; the second, pots for kitchen chores and for cooking over a fire. Second: a set of pots for kitchen chores and for cooking over a fire. The walls and the rooms of the artist’s home were filled with amphorae, pitchers, jugs, washbasins, bowls, and earthenware jars of many different sizes, cooking pots, stewpots, hot chocolate cups, poachers, bed warmers, pots and pans, along with other types of clay, metal, fibers, wood, and textiles.

Pot Salvatierra de los Barros, Extremadura, Spain

Filigree barrel Alba de Tormes, León, Spain

270

Unfortunately, the briefness of these pages does not allow us to make a complete description of every piece, not that they are less important in world handcraft production. Remarkable are the miniature figures of Catalonian Nativity scenes, typical siurells of the Balearic Islands, traditional objects linked to Extremaduran rural life made with fibers and rye straw (baskets, bright and colorful Montehermoso caps), ceramics from other Spanish and European regions, Central American textiles, as well as posters, stamps, furniture, decorative art pieces.

Cabrera Moreno’s vast collection abounds in feelings of respect and admiration the artist felt for others who were almost always relegated to anonymity.

Behind every treasured piece lies the knowledge of its origin and the academic study of its history, collated by his own eyes and his own hands in each town and workshop he visited. Servando Cabrera Moreno’s works and handcraft collection are the most tangible evidence of a man who devoted his constant attention to his fellow human beings; committed to learning and appreciating their history.

WHAT BELONGS TO US

Fanciful ceramic pieces collected by Servando

271

THE SOURCE OF LIFE

La fuente de la vida (The Source of Life), 1981 Oil on canvas, 124.5 x 159.5 cm MBSCM collection

CLAUDIA GONZÁLEZ MACHADO

Chronology

1923

1924

1923 Servando Miguel Justo Jesús Cabrera Moreno Sánchez Alcázar was born on May 28 at 2:08 p.m., on 105 Obispo Street, in the former Havana municipality, today Old Havana.

His ancestors were from Malaga and the Canary Islands, Spain. His father, Servando Cabrera Sánchez (born in Key West, Florida) was a merchant, his mother, Margarita Moreno Alcázar (born in Havana) was a bank clerk in the Cuban capital. She also taught typing and shorthand.

On his father’s side, he was the grandson of Andrés and Adelina, from Arroyo Naranjo and Pipián, respectively, in the former Havana province; and, on his mother’s side, of Miguel and Antonia, born in Málaga, in the autonomous province of Andalusia, Spain.

1924 He was baptized on January 1st in the San Felipe de Neri church, at the intersection of Obrapía and Aguiar streets, Old Havana.

1929-1936 He attended María Corominas School for his primary education. His early interest in painting can be seen in the many commemorative postcards and in albums he made for homework, as well as in several love poem booklets he illustrated for his aunt and godmother, Isabel, a key figure in his life.

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1931

1935

1931 On June 5 he received his first communion in the Church of Our Lady of Carmen.

Servando Cabrera’s childhood was spent in a family that enjoyed a stable economic situation, which favored his intellectual development. On his early vocation for drawing and painting, Servando would say: “I’ve been lucky. Since I was ten years old, I knew I wanted to be just one thing: a painter.”

Concha Ferrant, and Enrique García Cabrera.

Aware of the talent and discipline of the young artist, they predicted a brilliant future for him and a hope for Cuban academic painting.

1939 His family moved to 472 Concordia Street, Havana.

1940 1936 He began his art studies at the San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy. From his first year of studying color, his skill for painting and drawing was outstanding, as well as his constant desire to excel and his interest in artistic creation. An example of this was his decision to take drawing twice, because of his dissatisfaction with the first prize granted to Antonio Ferrer Cabello, a scholarship student from Santiago de Cuba.

At the time, Cabrera Moreno was a member of the José Escandel Pujol AJEF (Association of Youth, Hope of Fraternity) Lodge, while his father had joined the Fraternal Love Lodge. Servando received a commission from the latter for an oil portrait of Great AJEF leader Fernando Suárez Núñez, a work that was later sent to the AJEF Lodge in Mexico.

He specialized in drawing and painting at San Alejandro. Among his professors were important Cuban artists, such as Enrique Caravia, Eugenio Olivera, Armando García Menocal, Domingo Ramos, Ramón Loy, Leopoldo Romañach, Luisa Fernández, Manuel Vega,

His work was exhibited for the first time in the 23rd Salon de Bellas Artes, held in February by the renowned Asociación de Pintores y Escultores (Association of Painters and Sculptors).

Avance newspaper mentioned his painting Niña negra (Black Girl), shown out of competition, as follows: “We saw some non-competing works of substantial merit. […] a ‘little head’ full of life with a signature that, since it is illegible, we translate it as Cabrera Moreno.”

He graduated in Sciences and Letters from the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de La Habana (Havana High School). Besides his preuniversity studies, Servando attended the schools of Architecture, Pedagogy, and Philosophy and Letters. Although he did not finish any of these studies, he spent three years in the Philosophy and Letters department of the University of Havana, which provided him with a vast culture and a particular sensitivity. However, early in his life he became aware of his most profound interest and devoted himself to his main vocation: painting.

1936

Untitled (self-portrait), 1939 Pencil on paper, Private collection

1942 He graduated as a professor of drawing and painting from the San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy with the highest grades and first place in the final examinations. During his student years, he received twelve awards in various subjects, among them landscape, decorative art, life drawing, color theory, engraving, and still life.

1943 On September 8 he held his first solo exhibition, Exposición de retratos al carbón por Servando Cabrera Moreno (Exhibition of Charcoal Portraits by Servando Cabrera Moreno) at the Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club in Havana, which boasted one of the best art galleries in the country. The opening words were by Armando Maribona, and the catalogue contained opinions of important artists and intellectuals such as Leopoldo Romañach, Mariblanca Sabas Alomá, Mariana Fornaguera, and Félix de Cossío. For Romañach: “Young Servando Cabrera Moreno was among the most talented students in my class […] He is worthy of my highest esteem; I predict he will have a brilliant future in the field of pictorial art.”

During this period Servando took an interest in theater and set design, influenced by his friend Rubén Vigón and other important playwrights and stage designers of the time.

Throughout his life, he combined these activities with his painting and drawing.

1945

1948

1944 He was awarded First Prize at the I Salón de Otoño (First Autumn Salon), with a gouache work.

1945 He received the Bronze Medal in the 27th Fine Arts Salon with his portrait of Fernando Núñez de Villavicencio.

In September, the Cabrera Moreno exhibition was held at the Asociación de Reporters (Reporters Association), the oldest journalistic union in Cuba. The catalogue included opinions of important personalities in Cuban culture, like Jorge Mañach, Gastón Baquero, Armando Maribona, and Luis de Soto. At the time, Servando was outstanding as a portraitist following strictly academic canons.

situ, of Pablo Picasso’s work, specifically his pink, blue, and neoclassical periods, which greatly influenced his subsequent style. Works by Chaïm Soutine, Goya, and other Spanish artists had a similar effect on the Cuban artist.

1948 His solo exhibition at the Lyceum revealed a certain distancing from academicism, although still subtle. The portraits and nudes, as well as the depictions of harlequins and dancers, stand out. Arlequín azul (Blue Harlequin) was a direct reference to Picasso, starting with the title, the theme, and the treatment of the forms.

As part of his many artistic interests, together with Rubén Vigón and other exhibitors, he presented theater set design projects at the Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club.

1946 On February 23, the XXVIII Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes (28th Fine Arts Salon) was inaugurated, in which Servando presented several portraits, among them Srta. Gloria Sevilla and Vivien. At the same time, and with his own funds, he went to Canada to further his studies.

Later, he took a course at the New York Art Students’ League, an institution founded in 1875 for the training of art professionals in drawing, painting, sculpture, and engraving. Servando took drawing and painting under renowned professors like Ivan Olinsky and Jon Corbino. It was here that he experienced one of the most determining events of his life: the ­discovery, in

1949 In May he opened another solo exhibition at the Lyceum. His works denoted a greater departure from academic canons. This was the first big disappointment to his followers. In Habana (Havana), for example, the subject’s features were more stylized and the painting acquired a dynamic air because of the treatment of the apparel and the pose, while Servando’s new interest in capturing Cuban colonial architecture became explicit. This he would develop extensively in subsequent works.

He studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, an institution founded in 275

1952

1952

1902 which was attended by Cuban artists Antonio Sánchez Araújo, Domingo Ravenet, Juan José Sicre, Eduardo Abela, Loló Soldevilla, Umberto Peña and Amelia Peláez, and by artists from other countries, notably Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Amadeo Modigliani and Louise Bourgeois.

During his stay in Europe, Servando visited museums in Spain, Italy, Holland, England, Switzerland, and Portugal. This trip brought about his first decisive rupture with academicism. He adopted a geometrizing figuration with a clear cubist influence, which brought him closer to abstraction, more evident in his early works of the 1950s. After this trip, the international art scene and the great masters of painting greatly impacted him. This experience fostered in him a deep artistic knowledge that led him to question the formal aspects of his art, which would radically change in the years to come.

1950 He entered Comparseras (Carnival Dancers) 1948 in the I Salón de Artistas Iberoamericanos (First Salon of Ibero-American Artists) in Madrid.

68 works by 16 young Latin American painters and one sculptor were shown at this exhibition, which was excellently received by the critics, setting the precedent for the Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte (Spanish-American Art Biennial).

1951 He attended the First Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte held in Madrid, which was consid276

1953

ered the most significant event in the area of art policy under Franco’s regime.

In May he joined the Nuestro Tiempo Cultural Society and headed its visual arts gallery, where he participated in a group exhibition together with painters Roberto Diago, Carlos Enríquez, Víctor Manuel, Wifredo Lam, Raúl Martínez, Luis Martínez Pedro, René Portocarrero, and Amelia Peláez, and sculptors Rita Longa, Francisco Antigua, and Agustín Cárdenas. At the time, his work was gradually moving away from figurative representation.

Influenced by contemporary national and international artistic trends, he became interested in abstraction.

He made a trip to Mexico to conduct artistic research.

He was awarded the Gold Medal at the Inter-American Art Exhibition at the University of Tampa, for Yacente (Reclining).

1952 A prolific series of exhibitions began in various cities in Cuba: the Galería de Matanzas, where he showed some of his “Miró-like” works; he also exhibited abstractions in Madrid, Barcelona, and Zaragoza, (with his friend Antonio Saura), as well as in Paris galleries.

1953 In Madrid he participated in the exhibit Tendencias (Tendencies) together with Antonio Saura, Colombian sculptor Edgar Negret, and photographer Carlos Saura, among others.

1954

He took part in Arte fantástico (Fantastic Art), a show organized by Antonio Saura at the Clan Gallery, Madrid, exhibiting his “Miró-like” paintings together with those of renowned American artist Alexander Calder and Spaniards Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, Modest Cuixart, and Jorge de Oteiza. In the catalogue, Saura wrote: “In Cabrera Moreno’s paintings, the superimposition of forms, bones, and ectoblastic matter creates a thunderous diversion in which sensuality seems to be galvanized by a gleaming phosphorescent rhythm. As in certain atonal music, this state of disintegration and struggle creates a spatial meaning which provides a mysteriously precise atmospheric vacuum and a feeling of infinite sinking.”

1954 For his solo exhibition at Galérie La Roue, in Paris, together with abstract works, he displayed some non-objective pieces, in which he broke down color depending on light and shadow, in its abstract, elegant, and sinuous forms. Although this exhibition was a remarkable success, it bought with it a turn of events that changed Servando’s style radically. The marchand asked him to sign a contract with the gallery, which meant he would be a slave of art marketing machinations. He decided against the offer, and moved from abstraction to new expressive paths.

After his disappointment in Paris, Cabrera Moreno traveled to Spain, where he became interested in drawing charcoal portraits of townspeople. His work was dominated by the

CHRONOLOGY

Untitled, c. 1956 Tempera on cardboard, 92 x 74 cm Private collection

realism and roughness of the strokes, evidently influenced by Goya, Murillo, Zurbarán, and Picasso. Examples of this are the charcoal drawings Hombre con una horca (Man with a Pitchfork) and La churrera de Madrid (The Churro Vendor in Madrid), of great visual impact. These and other works are considered the forerunners of his subsequent epic painting.

In Cuba he took part in the filming of the documentary film El Mégano, which is considered to be the most important precursor to films with social concerns in Cuban cinema.

The film was made by a group of young filmmakers, among them Julio García Espinosa and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, from Nuestro Tiempo Cultural Society. It is an indictment of the inhumane living and working conditions of the charcoal burners in the Zapata Swamp before the Revolution succeeded in 1959.

During the filming, Servando recreated the lives of the charcoal burners in numerous drawings, which markedly influenced his future production.

1955 He traveled to Europe, Mexico and Central America. This increased his admiration for folk art and reaffirmed his particular eagerness as a collector. From then on, he brought home artifacts from all the countries he visited.

1956 Servando created the emblem for Teatro Estudio, a group officially established two years

1956

later by young artists with cultural and political interests. Teatro Estudio became one of the centers of Cuban theatrical life; fostered the development of important artists; and was an excellent school. At the theater, Servando strengthened bonds of friendship and work with many playwrights, set designers, and other significant figures, especially Vicente and Raquel Revuelta, siblings to whom he dedicated several works. On many occasions, he illustrated programs of plays directed by Vicente: Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Szechwan, and Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, both produced by Teatro Estudio.

He was also in charge of set designs for the ballet Son para turistas (Son for Tourists), by composer Juan Blanco. His vignettes and drawings can be found in programs and on the covers of numerous editions of Prometeo, a magazine on theater.

He developed friendly relations with several Cuban architects, notably Salvador Fernández, Raúl Oliva, and Fernando Pérez O’Reilly.

Motivated by these and other architects, he designed stained-glass windows and mosaics for private homes.

At the MNBA in Havana he exhibited works that resemble geometric abstraction, in which stylized ornamental elements in bright colors stand out, creating an interesting contrast between figure and background. These pieces were a success according to critics and viewers alike. The renowned newspaper Diario de la Marina said the exhibition “…has allowed us to see

1958

a change in his painting, resulting from his study trips and much work in France, Spain, Germany, and Italy.”

1958 Cabrera Moreno contributed to the atmosphere in the Havana Hilton Hotel (today Habana Libre) with paintings and silk screens.

Amelia Peláez, René Portocarrero, Cundo Bermúdez, Mario Carreño, and other distinguished Cuban artists also took part in this endeavor.

He decided not to vote in the national elections, because he was against Fulgencio Batista’s schemes to maintain power through a figurehead.

In December he held an exhibition in Washington that lasted until January, 1959.

He was not in Cuba on January 1st, when the revolutionary forces toppled Batista. Elated by the news, once the show closed, he immediately returned to Cuba.

1959 He illustrated the cover of Prometeo magazine.

He moved away from geometric figuration; man as the protagonist took a leading role in his paintings. Dynamic paintings emerged in which expressive possibilities were explored in various shades of a single hue. Also, some expressionist features could be perceived with antecedents in the realist drawings made in Spain and in El Mégano.

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1962

1964

1961 In August he was appointed coordinator of the Second Biennial in Mexico.

Together with other artists and intellectuals, he contributed to the founding of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (Union of Cuban Artists and Writers – UNEAC), and was elected to its National Council. From then until 1962, he worked in the Visual Arts Directorate of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura (National Cultural Council).

In December he inaugurated his solo exhibition, Cabrera Moreno, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Museum). He presented works which were the genesis of the first period of his epic painting, in which he depicted the protagonists of the revolution (bearded men, militia members, peasants, workers…) as well as some historic events (the bombing of the Revolutionary Armed Forces airports, the battle of Playa Girón , the explosion of the ship La Coubre…). His painting was dominated by monumentality, without dismissing influences of Picasso and the cubists who so deeply nourished his art.

He continued to expand his creative horizons and illustrated the cover of the record album Villancicos cubanos (Cuban Christmas Carols) by the Coro de Madrigalistas de La Habana (Havana Madrigal Chorus), under the direction of Manuel Ochoa.

1962 Together with Graziella Pogolotti and Raúl Oliva, he went on a tour to the then socialist 278

countries as organizer of the Exposición de Pintura Cubana (Exhibition on Cuban Painting).

During this journey, he made sketches that were later included in his series of ink drawings made in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania. As Graziella Pogolotti observed, the exhibition was “marked by the sign of the avant-garde” and “offered a good example of the assimilation of the main predominant trends of the 20th century,” among them abstractionism, expressionism and surrealism. The participating artists were Raúl Martínez, Juan Tapia Ruano, Loló Soldevilla, Salvador Corratgé, Luis Martínez Pedro, Antonia Eiriz, Ángel Acosta León, Amelia Peláez, René Portocarrero, Mariano Rodríguez, and Cabrera Moreno.

From that year on, he alternated his creative work and cultural mission with a no less important task: teaching, one of his great passions. He taught painting in the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Cubanacán (Cubanacan Visual Arts School), a position from which he exerted an extraordinary influence on the first graduates trained by the government. Nelson Domínguez, Ernesto García Peña, Gilberto Frómeta, Eduardo Roca (Choco), and Flavio Garciandía were among the artists who received this legacy.

Teaching also made him realize the need to share his knowledge and his folk art collection with students and friends. Although he was never able create a museum for his collections in his lifetime, he did provide his own space to show them to others.

In April, his solo exhibition, Servando Cabrera Moreno pinturas y dibujos sobre héroes, jinetes y parejas (Servando Cabrera Moreno Paintings and Drawings on Heroes, Horsemen and Couples), opened at the Galería de La Habana. It was a major success among critics and the public. The second phase of his epic painting was clearly visible. The monumentality of the figures remained, but they were more fluid and calm, with explicit concern for sharp visual results. In the catalogue, Graziella Pogolotti, referring to the plurality and diversity of Cabrera Moreno’s works, said that he was “…an isolated figure in Cuban art: He move among established preconceptions of generations and schools as a lonely walker, mindful only of the demands of his conscience as an artist.”

He illustrated the book La victoria de Playa Girón (The Victory at Playa Girón – 1964) by Fayad Jamís, who, besides being Servando’s close friend, also taught at the Escuela Nacional de Arte (National School of Art).

1965 He was dismissed from the staff of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Cubanacán. This was closely connected with the political situation, marked by an intolerance for sexual diversity.

Many of his students were forbidden from visiting him, under the pretext that he was a bad influence for the new generations. In Graziella Pogolotti’s words: “This was a very traumatic experience, to which we should add the drawback of not being able to continue with his classes in

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Cubanacan because […] he liked to teach youngsters, to train them, help them, which he found very stimulating.” It is possible that this decision to fire him was in part due to the convulsive situation at the moment, as well as the creation that same year of the Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (Military Units to Help Production) (UMAP), where people blamed of having ideological or moral “weaknesses” were sent.

His exhibition Apuntes de un viaje (Notes on a Trip) was shown at galleries in several provinces in Cuba, as well as in Hungary and the Soviet Union, with drawings made in 1962 during his trip to the socialist countries, in which he took an interest in portraying working class people in their daily activities.

He went to Paris, where he discovered Willem de Kooning’s paintings. This had a strong influence on his future work, marked by an attachment to “grotesque-expressive figures.” He developed his themes in series, among them: Human Columns, Neighbors, Bodies, and Kisses.

1966 An exhibition in Galería de La Habana showed his grotesque-expressive works. In the catalogue, Antonio Saura, a defender of this trend, wrote: “A body of work like that of Servando Cabrera Moreno, in Cuban society, may give rise to doubts and misunderstandings. His current paintings are made with anger and smashed forms, and his work seems to be a protest against something. But, against what is

1964

this painter protesting, who apparently turned into a moralist or a judge of society, using an artistic language in disconnected ways, with cruel smudges and aggressive colors, grotesque masks, and monstrous constructions? […] In Cabrera Moreno’s case, it is unquestionably not a protest against a concrete reality.”

1967 His health became seriously impaired by a heart attack; at an early age he had been diagnosed with heart disease. As a consequence, his desire to live was reinforced. The eminent Cuban physician Ada Kourí, the wife of Raúl Roa García, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, became his cardiologist and advised him on his many trips to various parts of the world.

1968 After his heart attack, he developed a prolific series of erotic paintings, marked by the monumental presence of the human body and genitalia. As he explained: “My illness was very serious and I clung to life in a tremendous way, with enormous happiness. The paintings of these times were very violent: genitalia appeared very pleased to be on earth, as fruit or flowers are.

There was no reason for them to be hidden.”

1969 With Flor de carne (Flower of Flesh), a testimony of his artistic exploration of human and vegetable anatomy, he received the first mention in the Eighth Edition of the Joan Miró International

1965

Prize for Drawing. This important award was granted by the Joan Miró Foundation sponsored by “La Caixa” Social Work, and was created with the aim of promoting culture and visual arts.

About this time, Cabrera Moreno also drew huge, stylized torsos, mostly without limbs, and of a great visual calmness, as well as several Besos (Kisses) which stand out because of their serenity when compared to those of 1965.

1970 He began a series on Seville, a city which moved him in a special way and became a lifelong symbol of love. He planned to continue this series until 2014.

1971 He made the poster for the film Páginas del diario de José Martí (Pages from José Martí’s Diary), directed by José Massip, another evidence of his deep bonds with several contemporary Cuban filmmakers, along with a special fondness for cinema and its history.

The monthly publication El Caimán Barbudo, invited Servando to do a series of erotic illustrations for issue No. 44. He offered them ink drawings representing female genitalia, hands, kisses, and torsos, some of them drawn with simple lines, others that used shadow and volume profusely. The issue was printed, but never went into circulation, despite the masterful artwork of the illustrations. Armando Quesada, the director of El Caimán Barbudo at the time, maintains he followed a decision made by the 279

1975

National Bureau of the Union of Communist Youths, the organization in charge of the publication. The drawings were misunderstood by many figures in the cultural world during a period that critic and essayist Ambrosio Fornet would later call the “Grey Quinquennium.”

The First National Congress on Education and Culture, held on April 23-30, implemented a cultural policy marked by exclusions and marginalization. Many of Cabrera Moreno’s works, primarily those following erotic and expressionistic lines, were withdrawn from the walls of the MNBA.

1979

Galería de La Habana, which received very favorable reviews from the press. Although part of the public liked it, some were disappointed because they perceived the paintings as commercial and decorative. Later, some critics interpreted these lengthened faces as phallic symbols.

1976 He painted the mural Así amanece Cuba (Cuba Awakens) for the Cuban embassy in Ottawa. It is one of the largest by the artist (24 sq. m.).

He steadfastly devoted himself to his art, creating 299 works this year alone.

1972 From 1972 to 1975, Cabrera Moreno returned to painting portraits, either full-length or faces, as seen in his “Habaneras,” “Guajiros ,” and his “Latin American Guerrillas.”

1973 He made the mural oil painting Presencia joven (Youthful Presence) for the Vladimir Ilich Lenin Vocational School, in which he included his well known “Guajiros” and “Habaneras.”

The design project for the school also included works by René Portocarrero, Mariano Rodríguez, and other Cuban artists.

1975 For International Women’s Year he opened the exhibition Habanera tú at the 280

sinuous limbs reappear once again… in refined and intimate drawings.

1978-1979 He traveled to Spain, Italy, Austria, ­ witzerland, Liechtenstein, Holland, Luxemburg, S Belgium, England, Portugal, and France.

1979 At Galería L, of the University of Havana, pieces on social and political themes ranging over a period of twenty-five years were exhibited in Obras inéditas de Servando Cabrera Moreno (Servando Cabrera Moreno’s Unseen Works).

He designed the poster for Pastor Vega’s Cuban film Retrato de Teresa (Portrait of Teresa).

1977 The editors of Revolución y Cultura magazine decided to devote issue No. 59 to Servando. One of his most emblematic works, El Moncada (The Moncada – 1974), from the Cuban film institute (ICAIC) collection, was chosen for the cover. Originally, the centerfold illustrations would also be Servando’s.

However, the editorial board of the magazine decided they did not depict the reality of that historic event and replaced them with works by other Cuban artists. The tribute fell short of expectations.

He created one of his most poetic series, La soledad de un autorretrato (The Solitude of a Self-Portrait) with 54 erotic ink drawings that highlight the formal and structural synthesis of the images. Torsos, calm genitalia, stylized and

1981 One of the most prolific years of his artistic career, in which he created numerous impor­tant poetic works of undoubtedly self-referential character, as can be perceived by their titles: La conciencia de ser yo (The Awareness of Being Myself), Lo que nos pertenece (What Belongs to Us), Cuando pienso lo que siento (When I Think What I Feel), Noviembre de todos los santos (November of All Saints), Cuando el aire tiembla (When Air Trembles), Una página bella en la vida (A Beautiful Page from Life), Mayo de todas las flores (May in Flower), El silencio y la esperanza (Silence and Hope), La fuente de la vida (The Source of Life), El largo camino de las nostalgias (The Long Path of Nostalgia)…

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1983

1983 He designed the publicity for the polemical film Cecilia, by renowned Cuban filmmaker Humberto Solás, in which he combined elements of his abstract period with more figurative ones, recreating the atmosphere of the film with a rich contrast of light and shadow.

He was elected Honorary Member of the Comité Cubano de la Asociación Internacional de Artistas Plásticos (Cuban Committee of the International Association of Artists).

On the morning of September 30, Servando Cabrera Moreno died from a second heart attack at only 58 years of age. At the burial in Cristóbal Colón Cemetery in Havana, Alfredo Rostgaard (then president of UNEAC’s Visual Arts Department) delivered the eulogy. The funeral was attended by a large number of persons, among them relatives, friends, students, colleagues, acquaintances, and admirers of his art.

1982 On October 19, the National Day of Cuban Culture, the Cultural Board of Playa Municipality inaugurated the Servando Cabrera Moreno Art Gallery with an exhibition of works by the painter.

It was located on 5th Avenue and 68th Street.

Years later, in need of a larger, more independent exhibition space, the gallery was relocated to its present site on First Avenue and 42nd Street, in the same municipality.

“Havana, Cuba,” a painting from the Habaneras series, was chosen for the cover of Cine Cubano magazine, No. 101.

On May 27, MNBA opened the exhibit Servando Cabrera Moreno 1923-1981. Homenaje en el 60 aniversario de su nacimiento (Servando Cabrera Moreno 1923-1981. Homage on the 60th Anniversary of his Birth). In the catalogue, Gerardo Mosquera affirmed that the artist’s works“…will be the heritage of another exceedingly beautiful period now unfolding.”

The exhibition 6 noches con Servando (Six Nights with Servando) was inaugurated at the Servando Cabrera Moreno Gallery in commemoration of the Day of Cuban Culture and the first anniversary of the new exhibition space.

Lectures on his art and presentations of works from various private collections were held every evening.

The first inventory of the assets in Servando Cabrera’s home was completed.

1987 Pintura y dibujo de Servando Cabrera Moreno (Paintings and Drawings by Servando Cabrera Moreno) was exhibited at the gallery dedicated to him to celebrate the fifth year of its founding.

1994 The Cuban government bought Servando Cabrera’s personal collection, composed of his works and those of other artists, as well as numerous examples of folk art, decorative arts, books, and personal papers. The pieces were placed in safe storage and a new inventory was made.

1998 In December, Alfredo Guevara inaugurated the exhibit La fuente de la vida: dibujos y óleos (The Source of Life: Drawings and Oil Paintings) with pieces from the artist’s collection, at a new space in the ICAIC building in the Vedado neighborhood that later became the Galería Servando.

Letras Cubanas published the book Servando Cabrera Moreno: Dibujo (Servando Cabrera Moreno: Drawings) by Gerardo Mosquera.

2003

By Resolution 77 of the Ministry of Culture, the MBSCM was founded in July as an institution under the National Council of Cultural Heritage.

For the first time one of his paintings was sold at SUBASTAHABANA: a 1957 piece sold for $12,500. From then on, works by the artist were included in that auction.

2004 In September, all his possessions had been moved to the site of the MBSCM and were received by Lina Blanco, the director of the institution at the time.

2005 The MBSCM submitted to the National Council of Cultural Heritage, as its main research project, a bio-bibliography on Servando Cabrera.

The museologists and librarians of the institution had begun the project in 2004.

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1987

1988

Lourdes de los Santos, with the support of the Hurón Azul producers of the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), made the documentary film Servando… en tres tiempos (Servando… in Three Parts), with numerous statements by specialists and friends of the artist: Luz Merino Acosta, Miguel Barnet, Nelson Domínguez, and Marta Arjona to name a few.

2007 MBSCM, which researches, promotes, preserves, and displays his legacy, opened its doors to the public. As part of its activities, solo exhibitions are held illustrating his versatility and mastery. This year’s exhibitions included Las damas de Servando (Servando’s Ladies), with portraits of various prominent Cuban women; El largo camino de la nostalgia (The Long Path of Nostalgia); twenty-five oil paintings made in 1981; and México popular: Pasiones de un viajero (Folkloric Mexico: The Passions of a Traveler), with more than a hundred pieces of Mexican folk art from Cabrera Moreno’s collection.

2008 On the 85th anniversary of the artist’s birth, the MBSCM held a yearlong program of activities that included various exhibitions of his collection and motivated several institutions to hold related activities. Among the exhibits in the museum, Todos los recuerdos de Sevilla (All the Memories of Seville), with ten of the twelve pieces Servando devoted to this Spanish city, was inaugurated together with La captura de las voces (The 282

2007

Capture of Voices), with eight paintings and four photographs from the Casa de las Américas and Cabrera Moreno’s collection, made in the 1950s and 1960s by Carlos and Antonio Saura, artists with whom Servando maintained a deep and lasting friendship. Other exhibitions included Pasión por lo humano (Passion for What Is Human), with works by Cabrera on the revolutionary period, and Una devoción compartida (A Shared Devotion), with 395 pieces from Servando’s religious folk art collection together with Cuban ethnologist Miguel Barnet’s treasures, a tour through the spiritual imagery of American, European, and African peoples.

The group exhibition Erótica. Sexualidad y erotismo en el arte (Erotica. Sexuality and Eroticism in Art) was inaugurated in the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. In recognition of Cabrera Moreno’s 85th anniversary, it included some of his works.

In November, La Gaceta de Cuba published in its sixth issue: a dossier on the artist, with texts by René Negrín, José Veigas, Flavio Garciandía, and Graziella Pogolotti.

As a tribute to Servando Cabrera, guitarist Luis Manuel Molina performed a concert at the Amadeo Roldán Theater with Spanish instrumental pieces and Beatles songs.

The Fondo Cubano de Bienes Culturales reproduced the works Siempre María (Always María) and Isabel y las brisas (Isabel and the Breeze) and exhibited them at the Arte en la Rampa Fair.

2008

A 2009 calendar, containing epic works by the artist, was edited and distributed. The selections were from the Cuban Council of State, ICAIC, Bacardí Museum, and MBSCM collections.

2009 Revolución y Cultura magazine illustrated the front and back covers of its second issue with Territorio (Territory, 1963) and Macheteros (1964). The text “Todos para uno: Servando y su Museo Biblioteca,” (All for One: Servando and His Museum and Library) by Israel Castellanos, was published in this issue, with a collection of statements by friends and specialists: Luisa Campuzano, Moraima Clavijo, Raúl Martínez, Marta Arjona, Lina Blanco, Eusebio Leal, and Miguel Barnet.

Concurrently to the 10th Havana Biennial, the MBSCM presented La conciencia del testigo (The Witness’s Conscience), with fifty expressionist pieces by Cuban artists Servando Cabrera, Antonia Eiriz, and Tomás Sánchez. It gathered works from its own collection, those of the Museo Municipal de San Miguel del Padrón, MNBA, UNEAC and private collections.

In coordination with the UNESCO Regional Office, the exhibition Jugar con arte (Playing with Art), with 200 pieces of the artist’s toy collection, was exhibited at the MBSCM, as a salute to the Day of Cultural Diversity.

The Cuban Spanish Ballet premiered Sevilla en el tiempo (Seville in Time), with choreography and direction by Eduardo Veitía,

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2011

2012

2013

2013 inspired by Servando Cabrera’s series on Seville.

The Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library organized Habanera, diosa indiana (Habanera, Indian Goddess), with works related to the 1975 Habanera tú exhibition. The 31 selections came from various collections, both private and state institutions (Federación de Mujeres Cubanas, Cuban Public Health Ministry, MNBA, and Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre). The exhibition commemorated the 490th anniversary of the foundation of San Cristóbal de La Habana (Havana).

2010 Génesis Galerías de Arte launched a folder with Servando Cabrera’s reproductions, illustrating his versatile artistic career.

2011 The exhibition Si vas a comer espera por Servando (If You Are Going to Eat, Wait for Servando) opened at the MBSCM, with 70 folk and decorative ceramic plates he had chosen for his personal collection in several years of conscious and skilled research. Some of these pieces have have the distinctive glaze and burnish of important European and Latin American manufacturers, including Talavera de la Reina, Talavera de Puebla, Pickman, Manises, and Meissen.

The exhibition Cerca del mar y del monte (Near the Sea and the Mountains) by Benito Ortiz (1896-1989), a naïf painter from Trinidad, was held at the Servando Cabrera Moreno

Museum and Library in commemoration of International Museum Day and the World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development, established by the United Nations. The exhibit was comprised of 16 pieces from Servando’s and other private collections and the collection of the Cuban National Council of Visual Arts (CNAP).

On the 30th anniversary of Servando’s death, Una magia descubierta (A Discovered Magic) was exhibited at the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library with pieces made by Servando in the 1950s, a period little known to the public and characterized by an interesting appropriation of non-figurative representation.

The René Portocarrero Silkscreen Workshop reproduced two of Cabrera Moreno’s “Habaneras”: Berta and Delia.

2012 As part of the First Puppet Bacchanalian for Adults, MBSCM inaugurated in March El retablo del maestro (The Master’s Tableau), with the artist’s puppet collection.

Among the concurrent activities to the 11th Havana Biennial, under the title Las colecciones de Cabrera Moreno (Cabrera Moreno’s Collections), the museum included new pieces in all its rooms.

On May 28th, Servando’s birthday, the Cuban TV program Elogio de la memoria (An Eulugy to Memory), directed by Yosiri López-Silvero, was devoted to Servando Cabrera Moreno.

The René Portocarrero Silkscreen Workshop reproduced Gloria.

“By resolution No. 10, Gladys M. Collazo, president of the National Council of Cultural Heritage, hereby declares to be a Cultural Heritage of the Nation everything that belonged to the artist, Servando Cabrera Moreno, including his works of art, his collections, prizes, documents, acknowledgements, photographs, and books, as well as his personal items. Furthermore, let it be known that MBSCM is authorized to take charge of the coordination of all actions by persons natural and juridical, with respect to all forms of use, authentication, diffusion and promotion of this patrimony related to the life and work of Servando Cabrera and that all interest in this regard should be transmitted through that institution.”

MBSCM celebrated Servando’s 90th birthday with the exhibit: Epiphany of the Body, along with a series of conferences, workshops, and radio and television programs. Artistic reproductions of 12 of his works were published in a folder by the Fondo Cubano de Bienes Culturales.

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© Enrique de la Uz

1944

1946

284 1976

©Tito Álvarez

1966 1966

1968 1964

© Arrate

1966

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Solo and Collective Exhibitions.

Awards and Prizes INFORMATION FROM THE UNPUBLISHED BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SERVANDO CABRERA MORENO, BY ZORAIDA PÉREZ AND ABEL MOLINA, WAS USED IN THIS SELECTION

Solo Exhibitions (Selection)

1943 Exposición de retratos al carbón por Servando Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, September 8-13 1945 Exposición Cabrera Moreno, Asociación de Repórters, Havana, September 18-23 1946 Foyer of the Valdés Rodríguez Municipal Theater, headquarters of the Academia de Artes Dramáticas (Academy of Dramatic Arts, ADAD), Havana [n. d.]

1948 Exposición de pintura por Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, January 22-31 1949 Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, May 11-17 1952 Cabrera Moreno. Óleos y gouaches, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, January 16-24 Cabrera Moreno. Óleos, Galería de Matanzas, February Exposición de pintura de Cabrera Moreno. Óleos y gouaches, Clan Gallery, Madrid, Spain, October 16-31 1953 Cabrera Moreno. Antonio Saura, Sala Libros, Zaragoza, Spain, April 6-15 Cabrera Moreno. Óleos y gouaches, Galería Caralt, Barcelona, Spain, October 17-30 1954 Cabrera Moreno, Paris, France, January 14-29 286

1956 Pinturas de Cabrera Moreno, MNBA, Havana, January 24-February 4 1958 Exposición Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, March 3-15 Cabrera Moreno of Cuba, Pan American Union, Washington D.C., December 1958-January 5, 1959 1959 Cabrera Moreno, Galería Sudamericana, New York, October 23-November 12 1961 Cabrera Moreno, MNBA, Havana, December 12-26 1964 Servando Cabrera Moreno. Pinturas y dibujos sobre héroes, jinetes y parejas, Galería de La Habana, April; Galería de Ciego de Ávila, June Exposición de dibujos de Servando Cabrera Moreno, Cuban House of Culture, Prague, Czechoslovakia, November 9 1965 Apuntes de un viaje. Dibujos. Servando Cabrera Moreno (traveling exhibition), galleries in Matanzas, Artemisa, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, Ranchuelo and Ciego de Ávila, April-September Servando Cabrera Moreno. Dibujos, galleries in Gyort and Budapest, Hungary; Exhibition Hall, House of the Painter and Sculptor, Painters’ Union, Moscow, Latvia, Soviet Union, July-October

1966 Exposición Cabrera Moreno, pinturas y dibujos /1966, Galería de La Habana, December 1966-January 1967 1967 Servando Cabrera Moreno, 20th Visual Arts Festival, Poland, September-October; Lublin, Poland, November 1975 Habanera tú, Galería de La Habana, June 1979 Obras inéditas de Servando Cabrera Moreno, Galería L, University of Havana, September 1982 Muestra de Servando Cabrera Moreno, Galería de Arte Servando Cabrera Moreno, October 19 1983 Servando Cabrera Moreno 1923-1981.

Homage on the 60th Anniversary of his Birth, MNBA, Havana, May 6 noches con Servando, Galería de Arte Servando Cabrera Moreno, Havana, October 19-21 and 24-26 1987 Homenaje a Servando Cabrera Moreno, Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas y Diseño, Havana, September Pintura y dibujo de Servando Cabrera Moreno, Galería de Arte Servando Cabrera Moreno, Havana, October 19 1988 Servando Cabrera Moreno, Small Salon, Oscar María de Rojas Museum, Cárdenas, Matanzas, July 23

Exhibition of Selected Works by Servando Cabrera Moreno, Christie’s, Amsterdam, Holland, October 10-15 1995 Servando Cabrera Moreno, Marpad Art Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida, NovemberDecember 1998 La fuente de la vida: dibujos y óleos, Cinemateca de Cuba, Havana, December 1999 La transparencia de sus pasiones. Homenaje a Servando Cabrera Moreno, Galería de Arte Servando Cabrera Moreno, Havana, November 2003 Servando al desnudo. Servando Cabrera Moreno: óleos y dibujos, Maxoly Gallery, Miami, Florida, August 25 2005 Momentos, Galería La Acacia, Havana, March 18-April 20 2007 Las damas… de Servando, MBSCM, Havana, May 22-June 22 El largo camino de la nostalgia, MBSCM, Havana, September 28-November 2008 Todos los recuerdos de Sevilla, MBSCM, Havana, May 2008-May 2009 Pasión por lo humano, MBSCM, Havana, October 23-December 2009 Habanera diosa indiana, MBSCM, Havana, November 2009-January 2010 2011 Una magia descubierta, MBSCM, Havana, October 2011-January 2012 2012 Las colecciones de Cabrera Moreno (concur­rent exhibition at the 11th Havana Biennial), MBSCM, Havana, April-June 2013 Epifanía del cuerpo, MBSCM, La Havana, June-July

Collective Exhibitions (selection)

1940 XXII Salón de Bellas Artes, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, February 1941 XXIII Salón de Bellas Artes, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, February Salón de Premiados, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana [n. d.]

Exposición de arte moderno y clásico (La pintura y la escultura contemporánea en Cuba), Palacio Municipal, Havana, December 29, 1941-January 17, 1942 1942 XXIV Salón de Bellas Artes, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, February II Salón de Bellas Artes. Exposición de pintura (organized by the Círculo de Bellas Artes de La Habana), Sociedad José Martí, Vereda Nueva, Havana, February 24 IV Exposición venta del Patronato de las Artes Plásticas, Havana, August 8-29 IV Salón de Acuarelas, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, October 8-13 1943 Exposición del Patronato de las Artes Plásticas, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, January 21 XXV Salón de Bellas Artes, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, March 18 Exposición de artes plásticas, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, May III Exposición municipal de pintura y escultura, Palacio Municipal, Havana, December 29, 1943-January 20, 1944 1944 I Salón Juan Bautista Vermay (organized by the Sociedad de Artes y Letras Cubanas), Halls of the Residencial Paraíso company (ground floor of the Centro Asturiano), Havana, February V Exposición venta del Patronato de las Artes Plásticas, Palacio Municipal, Havana, May 16-31 I Salón de Otoño, Sociedad Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, October 16-November 3

1945 II Salón Juan Bautista Vermay (organized by the Sociedad de Artes y Letras Cubanas), Colegio de Arquitectos, Havana, February 3-11 Exposición del Patronato de las Artes Plásticas, Colegio de Arquitectos, Havana, February Salón de Primavera (organized by the Sociedad Nacional de Bellas Artes), Salón de los Pasos Perdidos, Capitolio Nacional, Havana [n. d.]

XXVII Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana [n. d.]

Cuban Tempos, American Federation of Arts (traveled to many American cities [n. d.]

1946 XXVIII Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, February III Exposición nacional de pintura, Capitolio Nacional, Havana, March 2-17 III Salón Juan Bautista Vermay, Salones de la Sociedad de Industriales de Cuba, Havana, October 22-29 1947 El retrato cubano contemporáneo, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, July 9-14 XXIX Salón Anual de Pintura y Escultura, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, February 1948 XXX Salón de Bellas Artes, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Havana, January VII Salón de Pintura y Escultura, Colegio de Arquitectos, Havana, February 24-March 2 Bocetos de Cabrera Moreno, sobre un proyecto de escenografía y vestuario para Romeo y Julieta, foyer of the Valdés Rodríguez Municipal School, Vedado, Havana, October 24 Proyectos escenográficos, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, November 2-9 1949 Exposición de pintura de artistas cubanos contemporáneos, Palacio Municipal, Havana, March 23-25 Exposición de retratos cubanos modernos, Galería de los Mártires, University of Havana, August 287

1950 Exposición de pintura de artistas cubanos contemporáneos (sponsored by the Sociedad de Artes y Letras Cubanas), Asociación de la Prensa de Cuba, Havana, March 23-29 I Salón de Artistas Iberoamericanos sponsored by the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica, Círculo Cultural Medina, Madrid, June 12-26 24 artistas cubanos ante la UNESCO, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, December 10-23 1951 Pintura cubana contemporánea, Martello Art Gallery, Key West, Florida, January 16-February 5 Art Cubain Contemporain, Musée National d’art Moderne, Paris, February-March Exposición de pintores y escultores cubanos (inaugural exhibition at the Galería Nuestro Tiempo), Havana, March 10 Primera exposición de arte pictórico cubano, University of Tampa, Florida, May Exposición de dibujos, Galería Nuestro Tiempo, Havana, May 8-31 V Salón Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado, Palacio del Centro Asturiano, Havana, July-August Exposición Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte, Madrid, October [no further data] Contemporary Cuban Paintings, The Key West Art and Historical Society, Florida [n. d.]

Diseños para obras de teatro de Rubén Vigón, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, December 19-31 1952 XXVI Esposizione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, Venice, June 14-October 19 13 pintores cubanos, Galería General Electric, Havana, September 6-30 1953 VI Salón Nacional de Pintura y Escultura, salones del Capitolio Nacional, Havana, January 10-25 Tendencias, Galería Buchholz, Madrid, March 5-25 Arte abstracto 1953, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santander, Spain [n. d.]

Arte fantástico, Clan Gallery, Madrid, March-April 288

Cuban Tempos, American Federation of Arts (traveling exhibition to several American cities) [no further data] 1954 Arte abstracto, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, February 10-25 Pinturas, dibujos y esculturas, Galería Nuestro Tiempo, Havana, December 21 1955 Exposición en homenaje a Luis de Soto, Galería Nuestro Tiempo, Havana, May 3-8 La música a través de la pintura, Galería Cubana, Havana, May 18-June 1 Exposición plástica cubana contemporánea (Second University Festival of the Arts), School of Law, University of Havana, July 7-3 1956 Exposición homenaje en memoria de Guy Pérez Cisneros, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club in Havana, January 12-29 VIII Salón Nacional de Pintura y Escultura, MNBA, Havana, November 28-December 28 Cuban Tempos (traveling exhibit), The American Federation of Arts [no further data] 1957 8 pintores cubanos, Centro de Bellas Artes y Letras, Maracaibo, Venezuela, January 26-February 6 IV Bienal del Museo de Arte Moderno, São Paulo, September Pintura y escultura cubana 1957 (inaugural exhibition of the Galería Color-Luz), Havana, October Dos pintoras y dos pintores cubanos, Asociación Venezolana de Periodistas, Caracas, November Christmas Exhibition 1957, Galería Suramericana, New York, December 1958 Young Latin Americans, Galería Suramericana, New York, January 7-25 I Bienal Interamericana de Pintura y Grabado de México, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Museo Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Mexico D. F., June 6-August 20 Exposición de pintura cubana y venezolana, Galería Arte Visual, Venezuela, August

Novena exposición de pintura cubana contemporánea, Foyer of Hubert de Blanck Theater, Havana, December Exposición aniversario pintura y escultura cubana 1858, Galería de Arte Color-Luz, December 12, 1958-January 12, 1959 1959 Arte para Oriente, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, February 3-17 Salón de la Ciudad, Palacio Municipal, Santiago de Cuba, February 24-March 2 Contemporary Drawings from Latin Americans, Pan American Union, Washington D.C., April 13-May 10 Exposición de arte latinoamericano contemporáneo, IX Festival de Cartagena de Indias, Palacio de la Inquisición, Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, May 24-June 10 Salón Anual. Pintura, Escultura y Grabado, MNBA, Havana, October 10-November 10 V Bienal de São Paulo, Museo de Arte Moderno, Sao Paulo, September-December 1960 II Bienal Interamericana de México, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico D. F., September 5-November 5 Pintura contemporánea en Cuba ((traveling exhibition organized by the Casa de las Américas), Caracas, July; Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, and Uruguay [no further data] IV Exposición Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, New Delhi, India [no further data] 1961 Exposición de pintura, grabado y cerámica (on the occasion of the First National Congress of Cuban Writers and Artists), MNBA, Havana, August 18-22 VI Bienal de São Paulo, Modern Art Museum, Parque Ibirapuera, Sao Paulo, September-December 1962 Salón Nacional / 1962. Homenaje a Carlos Enríquez, MNBA, Havana, February Primer Salón Nacional de Dibujos 1962 sobre Temas de la Revolución, Galería de Oriente, Galería de Matanzas, Galería de Santa Clara, July-September Exposición colectiva de artes plásticas cubanas, Galería de Arte INIT, Habana

1963 Exposición IV aniversario de la Revolución, Casa de las Américas, Havana, January Pintura y escultura cubanas (on the occasion of the 7th Congress of the International Union of Architects), Salón de 23 y O, Havana, September 29-October 3 Museo Nacional. 1913-1963 (on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the MNBA, Havana) 1964 Galerías de arte cubano, MNBA, Havana, July Exposición homenaje a Venezuela, Galería Latinoamericana, Casa de las Américas, Havana, November Exposición dibujos 1964, Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, Havana, December Salón Nacional de Pintura y Escultura, MNBA, Havana, December 1965 Subasta pro-Jornada Internacional de la Infancia, MNBA, Havana, June Exposición de dibujos de artistas cubanos, MNBA, Havana, July III Salón Nacional de Dibujo y Pintura 1965 (commemorating July 26 and in homage of Acosta León), Museo Ignacio Agramonte, Camaguey, July 31-August 4 Salón Nacional de Dibujo, Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, Havana, December 1966 Kunst aus Kuba. Zehn Kubanische Maler Stellen Aus, ZB Gallery, Vienna, February 5-March 5 Pittura cubana contemporanea, Palazzo Re Enzo, Sala del Trecento, Bologna, December 13-28 First London Exhibition of Contemporary Cuban Art, Ewan Phillips Gallery, London, [n. d.]

Pintura cubana contemporánea, Due Mondi, Galleria d’Arte Internazionale, Rome, October

Exposición de pintura cubana contemporánea, Dalles Hall, Bucharest [n. d.]

1967 Diez pintores cubanos, Palace Exhibition Hall, Prague, Czechoslovakia, and ZentralBuchhlandlug Gallery, Vienna, April Segunda exposición de obras recuperadas, MNBA, Havana, June Pintores cubanos: tintas, Galería de Artes Plásticas, Centro Cultural Coyoacán, Mexico D. F., July Exposición homenaje al 26 de Julio, Galería Latinoamericana, Casa de las Américas, Havana, July Festival Internacional de Pintura, Sopot, Poland, September 23-October 23 Pintura cubana contemporánea (organizada por la Casa de las Américas), MNBA, Havana, December 1-9 1968 Panorama del arte en Cuba, MNBA, Havana, January Pintura cubana contemporánea, Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte, Mexico D. F., February Pintura cubana hoy, Instituto Latinoamericano, Rome, June 6-13 Siembra de primavera (exposición de dibujos de pintores y escultores cubanos), Galería Latinoamericana, Casa de las Américas, Havana, June Pintura contemporánea cubana, Lund Museum, Stockholm, October 1969 VIII Premio Internacional de Dibujo Joan Miró, Palacio de la Virreina, Barcelona, June-July Semaines cubaines, Maison de la Cultura, Grenoble, France, June 12-August 31 Exposición de óleos, dibujos y grabados.

26 de Julio, MNBA, Havana, July 18-August 19 Pintura cubana de hoy, United Nations Organization, New York, [n. d.]

Salón Nacional de Artes Plásticas. Pintura y Escultura, UNEAC, Havana, December 1970 IX Premio Internacional de Dibujo Joan Miró, Colegio de Arquitectos de Cataluña y Baleares, Barcelona, Spain, May-June Salón 70, MNBA, Havana, July-September

1972 Exposición de reproducciones artísticas, Galería de La Habana, July Imagen múltiple, MNBA, Havana, August 1973 Exposición homenaje al XX aniversario del asalto al cuartel Moncada, Galería UNEAC, Havana, July-August Exposición del pequeño formato: pinturas y esculturas, Galería L, Havana, September 1974 Afiches de cine (circulating exhibition), Galería L, Havana, March Exposición conmemorativa Victoria de Girón, MNBA, La Habana, abril La mujer. Tiempo e imágenes, MNBA, Havana, November 1975 Panorama del arte cubano de la colonia a nuestros días, Museo de Arte Moderno de México, Mexico D. F., April-May Exposición conmemorativa. Día del Campesino, MNBA, Havana, May Kubai Grafikai Kiállitás, Ernst Muzeum, Budapest, Hungary, August 8-31 [no further data] Dibujantes cubanos, Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow, USSR, September Dibujos cubanos, Mohamed Racim Gallery, Algiers, Algeria, October Arte cubano contemporáneo, Odd-Fellow Palacet Bredgade, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 13-23 Exposición d’art plastique de 10 artists de Cuba. Exposition de dessin et de gravure cubains, Damascus National Museum, Syria, December 22-31 Arte cubano contemporáneo, Oslo, Norway [no further data] Exposición de pintura y gráfica cubanas (Cuban cultural mission to Mexico) [no further data] Seis dibujantes cubanos, Galería Sztuki Biva, Szczecin, Poland [n. d.]

1976 Exposición de artes plásticas de 10 artistas cubanos. Exposición de dibujos y grabados cubanos, Arabian Cultural Center, Homa, Syria, January 5-12 Exposición de artes plásticas de 10 artistas cubanos. Exposición de dibujos y grabados 289

SOLO AND COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS. AWARDS AND PRIZES

Libre Hotel, Galería de Oriente, Galería de Cienfuegos, November-December Pintura cubana contemporánea (traveling exhibition to Socialist countries) Prague, Sofia, Budapest, Bucharest, Warsaw, and Moscow [no further data]

cubanos, Alep-Musée National, Morocco, January Sandino y Nicaragua en la plástica cubana (traveling exhibit), Sala Martínez Villena, UNEAC, Havana, February Arte cubano contemporáneo, Tampere Museum, Helsinki, March 18-April 11 Pintura y gráfica cubanas, Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw, Poland, April 22-May 2 Pintura y gráfica cubanas, Galería Nacional, Sofía, Bulgary, May 7-20 El campesino en la plástica cubana (exhibit commemorating as a tribute to the 15th Anniversary of ANAP and the Farmer Day), MNBA, Havana, May Exposición de solidaridad de los artistas plásticos cubanos con el pueblo de Angola, Galería de La Habana, May Camino de Santiago de Chile, Galería Latinoamericana, Casa de las Américas, Havana, November Exposición de la plástica cubana actual, Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia, November Viva Cuba libre (exhibition of the Brigada de Artes Plásticas Hermanos Saíz, organized

by UNEAC-UJC), Paris [no further data] 1977 Exposición de artes plásticas, Galería Centro de Arte Internacional, Havana, October Exposición poemas ilustrados, Galería Hurón Azul, UNEAC, Havana, October 1978 Revolución y Cultura. De la imprenta a la galería, Centro de Arte Internacional, Havana, June 50 años de la Revista de Avance, MNBA, Havana, October 160 aniversario de la escuela San Alejandro, MNBA, Havana, February 1979 1 000 carteles cubanos de cine. XX aniversario de la cinematografía cubana, MNBA, Havana, March Pintura cubana, Galería L, Havana, January – February A Kubai Festészeti 50 Éve, Szépmuvészeti Muzeum, Budapest, Hungary, June 28-August 5 Plástica cubana contemporánea: exposición colectiva, Galería de La Habana, August Didáctica 2, MNBA, La Habana [n. d.]

La escuela y el museo, MNBA, Havana [n. d.]

290

1980 La mujer a través del arte (in honor of Celia Sánchez Manduley and the 3rd Congress of the Federación de Mujeres Cubanas), MNBA, Havana, March EI color habla…, MNBA, Havana [n. d.]

Cuatro siglos de arte en Cuba (xvi-xx): exposición, MNBA, Havana, November 1981 Los artistas plásticos de Plaza saludan el XX aniversario de la declaración socialista y la victoria de Girón (exposición inaugural), Centro de Arte 12 y 23, Havana, April 17 Primer Salón Nacional de Pequeño Formato, Salón Lalo Carrasco, Habana Libre Hotel, Havana, September-October Exposición Homenaje y saludo, Centro de Arte 12 y 23, Havana, October 1982 Muestra colectiva de arte cubano, The Signs Gallery, New York, January Febrero, el amor, Galería Habana, February Imagen de Martí (en saludo al Día de la Cultura Cubana), MNBA, Havana, October Otra manera de contar nuestra historia, Galería Habana [n. d.]

1983 De nosotros a ellas, Galería Amelia Peláez, Parque Lenin, Havana, March Nueva pintura cubana, galería de arte de la librería Pomaire, Quito, May 30 Pintura cubana contemporánea. Colección Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Emilio Bacardí Museum, Santiago de Cuba, July 1984 Exposición de artes plásticas y artesanía artística del Fondo de Bienes Culturales, Galería Habana, February Exposición de pintura contemporánea cubana, Gallery of the Soviet Union Painters’ Union, Moscow, USSR, February Veingt peintres cubains, Galería de la Explanade de la Défense, Paris, May 29-June 30 Exposición de pintura contemporánea cubana, Ca Giustiniani Hall, Tourism Bureau, Venice, May-June Kuns aus Kuba, Institute of Foreign Relations, Stuttgart, August; Ifa-gallery, Bonn, September

Exposición dibujos cubanos, MNBA, Havana, October Diseño gráfico: carteles, cubiertas de libros: Exposición (Salón de la Ciudad), Galería Galiano y Concordia, Havana, November Exposición colectiva latinoamericana, Galería Marriot Caesar Park Hotel, Panama, December 10, 1984-January 15, 1985 La plástica en la Revolución, Galería de Arte Servando Cabrera Moreno, Havana, December 29. 1984-January 15, 1985 1985 Diecisiete pintores cubanos, Galería Habitante, Panama, February La mujer en la plástica cubana, Oscar María de Rojas Museum, Cárdenas, Matanzas, March 1987 Salas cubanas. Panorama de las artes cubanas, MNBA, Havana, October Exposición 60 x 28: una muestra de 60 carteles de cine cubanos en homenaje a Juana Marco (commemorating the 28th anniversary of ICAIC), Galería de Arte Domingo Ravenet, Havana Pintura cubana contemporánea, Pequeño Salón, Colección Permanente, Oscar María de Rojas Museum, Cárdenas, Matanzas, 1987-1988 1988 El arte gráfico contemporáneo de Cuba, Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow, October 1989 La Habana en Madrid. Muestra cultural cubana, Centro Cultural de la Villa, Madrid, February 10-19 1990 La mujer en la plástica: exposición, Galería de Arte Vedasto Acosta Febles, San José de las Lajas, Havana province, June 1991 Nuevas adquisiciones, MNBA, Havana, May-June 1993 Arterótico, Galería La Acacia, Havana, February-March Desde el dibujo, Galería La Acacia, Havana, August

1995 Los monstruos de la razón, Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas y Diseño, Havana, November El tema histórico en la pintura cubana, MNBA, Havana, May 1996 Martí en la plástica cubana. Obras escogidas, José Martí Memorial, Havana, May Exposición de pintura latinoamericana, Art Gallery at the Opera House, Cairo, November 13-20; L’Atelier Gallery, Alexandria, Egypt, November 25-December 4 2000 La gente en casa (VII Bienal de La Habana), MNBA, Havana, November 2000-January 2001 2001 Tal como aquí te pinto, tal te han visto mis ojos, José Martí Memorial, Havana, January 17-March 31 Arte cubano, Galería Uver Solís, Jovellanos, Matanzas, April

MNBA, Universal Art Building, November 28, 2008-February 15, 2009 2009 Exposición-homenaje por el 50 aniversario de Teatro Estudio (programs, technical data, photography, and wardrobes of the main stage presentations of this group. The logo and several of the programs were designed

by Servando Cabrera), MBSCM, Havana, January-March La conciencia del testigo (concurrent exhibit to the 10th Havana Biennial, in honor of Antonia Eiriz, with works by Antonia, Tomás Sánchez and Servando Cabrera), MBSCM, Habana, March 19-June

1945: Bronze medal at the XXVII Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes de La Habana (27th Havana Fine Arts Salon) 1946: Silver medal at the XXVIII Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes de La Habana (28th Havana Fine Arts Salon) 1948: Gold medal at the XXX Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes de La Habana (30th Havana Fine Arts Salon) 1951: Gold medal at the Inter-American Art Exhibition, University of Tampa, Florida 1969: First mention at the 8th Joan Miró International Prize for Drawing, Spain 1975: Raúl Gómez García Society, Havana 1978: Diploma and medal for 30 years of service: Ministry of Culture, Havana

2011 Tiempo de gesta (in honor of the 50th anniversary of UNEAC), MBSCM, Havana, October-December

Awards

1942: Honorable mention and bronze medal at the XXIV Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes de La Habana (24th Havana Fine Arts Salon) 1943: Bronze medal at the XXV Salón del Círculo de Bellas Artes de La Habana (25th Havana Fine Arts Salon) 1944: First prize at the I Salón de Otoño (First Autumn Salon), Havana

2004 Mirar a los 60. Antología cultural de una década, MNBA, Havana, July 9-August 31 2006 Arte de Cuba, Banco do Brasil Cultural Center, Sao Paulo, January 31-April 23; Rio de Janeiro, May 16-June 16; Brasilia, August 1st-October 15 2008 Cuba, art et histoire de 1968 á nos jours, Pavillon Jean-Noël Desmarais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada, January 31-June 8 Erótica. Erotismo y sexualidad en el arte (exhibition for Servando’s 85th birthday), 291

SOLO AND COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS. AWARDS AND PRIZES

Dulce María Loynaz y la ciudad de las columnas. La ciudad de La Habana vista por sus pintores, Sala de Arte 1-2-9-3, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, April 23-May 14; Caja de Ahorros de Asturias, Oviedo, June; Casa de la Parra, Consellería de Cultura e Xuventude, Xunta de Galicia, July 8-31; Palacio Provincial, Fundación Provincial de Cultura, Diputación de Cádiz, Spain, September 15-October 15

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VEGA, ELSA: “Otras perspectivas del arte moderno (1951-1963)”, in Guía Arte Cubano, National Museum of Fine Arts, Escandón Impresores, Seville, 2003, pp. 156-183.

VIVANCO, LUIS FELIPE: Primera Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte, Editorial Afrodisio Aguado, Madrid, 1952.

Periodicals “Abren exposición del pintor Servando Cabrera Moreno en Bellas Artes”, Granma, Havana, May 30, 1983, p. 2 ACOSTA, ALEJANDRO G.: “Una casa, un pintor”, Cuba Internacional, 15 (161), Havana, April 1983, p. 62.

ACOSTA DE ARRIBA, RAFAEL: “Arte y erotismo, vasos comunicantes”, Sexología y Sociedad, 10 (26), Havana, December 2004, pp. 4-8. _______________: “Un siglo del desnudo fotográfico en Cuba”, Unión, 9 (31), Havana, April-June 1998, pp. 73-81.

ALOMÁ, ORLANDO: “Cabrera Moreno: sus formas y gestos”, Cuba, 4 (58), Habana, February 1967, p. 32.

ALONSO, ALEJANDRO G.: “Cada quien su paisaje”, Revolución y Cultura, 121, Havana, September de 1982, pp. 35-40. _______________: “Pintores por una causa”, Juventud Rebelde, Havana, March 1st, 1976, p. 4. _______________: “Servando Cabrera Moreno; ayer, hoy y mañana”, Juventud Rebelde, Havana, October 1st, 1981, p. 4. ÁLVAREZ BRAVO, ARMANDO: “Las maravillosas líneas de Servando Cabrera Moreno”, El Nuevo Herald, Miami, November 8, 1995, p. 2D. AMADO BLANCO, LUIS: “Cabrera Moreno”, Información, Havana, March 20, 1958 [press clipping, n. p.].

ANTÓN, MAHÉE: “Museo Biblioteca Servando Cabrera Moreno. Privilegio para el espíritu”, Cartelera, 415, Havana, August 2004, pp. 1-3.

“Arte Fantástico”, February-March 1953 [press clipping, no further data].

BAQUERO, GASTÓN: “Servando Cabrera”, Lyceum, 8 (29), Havana, February 1952, pp. 140-141.

BRANLY, ROBERTO: “Pintura y Revolución”, Diario de la Tarde, Havana, December 19, 61, p. 8.

CABALLERO, RUFO: “Cimbrear en el aire.

Deseo y pansexualidad en los “torsos acoplados” de Cabrera Moreno”, Revolución y Cultura, 4, Havana, July-August 1999, pp. 33-40.

“Cabrera Moreno: Un abstrait aérien”, Arts, 446, Paris, January 1954, pp. 14-20.

“Cabrera Moreno: una real capacidad decorativa”, El Nuevo Herald, Miami, November 8, 1995, p. 1D. CABRERA MORENO, SERVANDO: “Apuntes de viaje”, La Gaceta de Cuba, 36 (4), Havana, July-August 1998, p. 31.

CANO MORENO, LEONARDO: “Un personaje en busca de autor”, Juventud Rebelde, Havana, January 22, 2005, p. 4.

CAPOTE, ÁNGELA: “Las habaneras de Servando”, Tribuna, Bogotá, November 15, 2009, p. 7.

CASTELLANOS LEÓN, ISRAEL: “La conciencia del testigo”, Art Nexus, 8 (73), Bogotá, 2009, pp. 133-134. ______________: “Flash back al Servando erótico”, Juventud Rebelde, Havana, March 8, 1998, p. 12. ______________: “Momentos de Servando Cabrera en La Acacia”, Juventud Rebelde, Havana, March 29, 2005, p. 6. ______________: “Textículo; de lo masculino en la visualidad cubana”, Artecubano, 1, Havana, March 8, 1998, p. 12. ______________: “Todos para uno: Servando y su Museo Biblioteca”, Revolución y Cultura, 2, Havana, MarchApril 2009, pp. 28-41 CASTRO, MARTHA DE: “Exposición en la General Electric Cubana S. A.”, Lyceum, 8 (32), Havana, November 1952, pp. 172-174.

CATÁ, ALMAYDA: “Una experiencia en pintura colectiva”, Unión, 5 (3), Havana, July-September 1966, pp. 179-180. ______________: “El Salón 70”, Unión, 9 (4), Havana, December 1970, pp. 168-174. ______________: “Servando Cabrera: un nuevo lenguaje plástico”, Unión, 6 (1),

Havana, January-March 1967, pp. 165-166.

“Cuando el joven pintor Servando Cabrera…”, Nuestro Tiempo, 6 (27), Havana, February 1959, p. 17.

DELACROIX, CLAUDIA: “Azules de Servando Cabrera”, Sol y Son, 52 (1), 52 (1), Havana, February 1999, p. 39.

DESNOES, EDMUNDO: “La pintura cubana: una interpretación”, Casa de las Américas, 2 (8), Havana, September-October 1961, pp. 38-45.

DÍAZ MARTÍNEZ, MANUEL: “Una exposición de Cabrera Moreno”, Casa de las Américas, 2 (9), Havana, November-December 1961, p. 130. ______________: “Exposición de Cabrera Moreno”, Noticias de Hoy, Havana, December 24, 1961 [press clipping, n. p.]. ______________: “Personajes de la Revolución”, Artes Plásticas, Havana, January 2 1961, pp. 18-23.

ESCALONA, MERCEDES: “Pinturas y estafa”, Trabajadores, Havana, April 26, 1988, p. 2. ÉVORA, JOSÉ ANTONIO: “El vigor inconfundible de Servando Cabrera Moreno”, El Nuevo Herald, Miami, August 3, 2003, p. 8E. “Exposición Cabrera Moreno”, February 1954 [press clipping, no further data].

FANDIÑO, ROBERTO: “La pintura”, Nuestro Tiempo, Havana, VI (27), January-February 1959, p. 17.

FERNÁNDEZ RODRÍGUEZ, ANTONIO ELIGIO (TONEL): “Antonia Eiriz en la pintura cubana”, Revolución y Cultura, 3, Havana, April 1987, pp. 38-45.

FERRER, SUSANA: “Cabrera Moreno en Cuba”, Tiempo, Havana, January 22, 1956 [press clipping, n. p.].

GARCÍA RÍOS, JULIETA: “Servando, un paseante solitario” (Interview with Graziella Pogolotti), Juventud Rebelde, Havana, July 6, 2006, p. 4.

GARZÓN CÉSPEDES, FRANCISCO: “Exposición de dibujo y pintura en Camagüey”, Romances, 30 (349), Havana, October 1965, pp. 88-89.

GONZÁLEZ FREIRE, NATI: “Primer salón nacional de artes plásticas de la UNEAC”, Bohemia, 60 (36), Havana, September 6, 1968, pp. 80-81.

293

GUERRA, ESTELA: “Delación sin precedente”, Granma, Havana, November 20, 1988 [press clipping, n. p.]. _____________: “Se descubre un engaño”, Moncada, 23 (5), Havana, September 1988, pp. 16-19.

GUEVARA, ALFREDO: “Servando en la memoria”, Cine Cubano, 144, Havana, April-June de 1999, p. 2.

HERNÁNDEZ, EDGARDO: “Dibujos y pinturas de Cabrera Moreno en la Galería de La Habana”, Noticias de Hoy, Havana, April 26, 1964 [press clipping, n. p.].

HORSTMAN MANRARA, J. L.: “Cabrera Moreno en el Lyceum”, Crónica, Havana, May 15, 1949 [press clipping, n. p.].

HOZ, PEDRO DE LA: “Leyenda y perfil”, Granma, Havana, August 14, 2007, p. 6.

“Inauguran en Praga exposición de dibujos del cubano Servando Cabrera”, Noticias de Hoy, Havana, November 10, 1964 [press clipping, n. p.].

“Influencia popular. El arte de Cabrera Moreno”, Visión, Washington D. C., January 30, 1959 [press clipping, n. p.]

JUAN, ADELAIDA DE: “Héroes, jinetes y parejas”, Bohemia [press clipping, n. num.], Havana, May 8, 1964, pp. 26. ______________: “Los temas en la pintura cubana”, Cuba Internacional, 3 (27), Havana, October 1971, pp. 34-41.

LEYVA MARTÍNEZ, IVETTE: “Servando al desnudo”, Encuentro, Miami, August 14, 2003 [press clipping, n. p.].

LÓPEZ GARCÍA, SERGIO: “Canto a lo cubano”, Mujeres, 6 (10), Havana, October 1976, p. 55.

LÓPEZ NUSSA, LEONEL: “Rostros de Cabrera Moreno”, Bohemia, 67 (28), Havana, July 11, 1975, p. 27. ________________: “Salón Nacional de Dibujo”, Unión, 5 (1), Havana, JanuaryMarch 1966, pp. 180-181. ________________: “25 años de Cabrera Moreno”, Bohemia, 71 (43), Havana, October 26, p. 28.

LÓPEZ OLIVA, MANUEL: “Cabrera Moreno, del cine al ojo del pintor”, Cine Cubano, 101, Havana, February 1982, pp. 44-53.

294

________________: “Panorama de Cabrera Moreno en la Galería L”, Granma, Havana, November 9, 1979, p. 4. ________________: “Servando Cabrera ha decidido vivir, desde ahora, en sus dibujos y pinturas”, Granma, Havana, October 2, 1981, p. 4.

LOY, RAMÓN: “Cuadros de Cabrera Moreno, Lina Laboudette y Manuel Villarrubia”, Alerta, Havana, May 16, 1949, p. 3.

MARQUINA, RAFAEL: “La exposición Cabrera Moreno en el Lyceum”, Información (suplemento), Havana, March 9, 1958 [press clipping, n. p]. _______________: “Exposiciones de arte”, Información, Havana, March 7, 1958 [press clipping, n. p.]. _______________: “Una visita al Salón”, Información, Havana, February 26, 1946, p. 11. _______________: “El XXVIII Salón de Bellas Artes”, Información, Havana, February 23, 1946, p. 11.

MARTÍN, EDGARDO: “Ballet. El recital de danza de Ramiro Guerra”, Nuestro Tiempo, 2 (6), Havana, July 1955, pp. 9-10.

MARTÍNEZ, RAÚL: “Servando juega con dios y con el diablo”, La Siempreviva, 1, Havana, 2007, pp. 30-35.

MARTÍNEZ BELLO, A.: “Exposición de Cabrera Moreno”, Mañana, Havana, January 31, 1956 [press clipping, n. p.].

MOSQUERA, GERARDO: “Cabrera Moreno: un recuento de una trayectoria artística”, Bohemia, 73 (44), Havana, October 30, 1981, pp. 14-19. ______________: “Cabrera Moreno: toda la pintura”, Revolución y Cultura, 59, Havana, July 1977, pp. 45-59. ______________: “En homenaje a Servando Cabrera Moreno”, Granma (Weekly Summary), Havana, July 10, 1983, p. 7. ______________: “Servando Cabrera expone en la Galería L”, Plegable, 5 (8-9), Havana, August-September 1979 [press clipping, n. p.]. ____________: “Servando Cabrera Moreno: Un artista comprometido con su tiempo”, Granma (Weekly Summary), Havana, October 11, 1981, p. 16.

______________: “Servando Cabrera Moreno y sus dibujos”, Bohemia, 71 (48), Havana, November 30, pp. 10-13. ______________: “Servando Cabrera Moreno. Viaje por la pintura”, Art Nexus, 12 (58), Bogota, April-June 1994, pp. 86-90.

OLSHEVSKI, VADIM: “Una faceta más de Cuba”, Hoy, Havana, August 12, 1965, p. 2.

ORAÁ, PEDRO DE: “Dibujos de Cabrera Moreno. Erotismo y belleza”, Unión, 9 (4), Havana, December 1970, pp. 133-134.

ORAMAS, ADA: “De Servando, el arte en tono mayor (I)”, Tribuna de La Habana, Havana, October 30, 1987, p. 6. ______________: “De Servando, el arte en tono mayor (II)”, Tribuna de La Habana, Havana, October 31, 1987, p. 6.

OTERO, ERNESTINA: “El XXVII Salón de Bellas Artes”, Alerta, Havana, March 30, 1945, p. 3.

“Otro viaje con Servando (Dossier)”, La Gaceta de Cuba, 6, 6, Havana, November-December 2008, pp. 47-71.

PELÁEZ, ROSA ELVIRA: “Asistió Hart al sepelio del pintor Servando Cabrera Moreno”, Granma, Havana, October 2, 1981, p. 4.

PEREIRA, MARÍA DE LOS ÁNGELES: “La plástica cubana en el continuo de sus desafíos: antes y durante un período especial”, Universidad de La Habana, 250, Havana, January-March 1999, pp.

247-260.

PÉREZ HERNÁNDEZ, MARÍA ZORAIDA: “El amigo, el maestro, el pintor Servando Cabrera Moreno, según Graziella Pogolotti” (Interview with Graziella Pogolotti), La Gaceta de Cuba, 6, Havana, November-December 2008, p. 49. ______________: “Un pintor llamado Servando Cabrera Moreno”, HiCuba!, 13, Valencia, 2007, pp. 2-4.

“Pintura cubana del Museo Nacional de Cuba”, Revista de la Universidad, 2 (5), Tegucigalpa, October-December 2001, pp. 43-58.

PITA RODRÍGUEZ, FÉLIX: “Cabrera Moreno, artista de su tiempo”, Pueblo y Cultura, 14, Havana, September 1963, pp. 32-36.

______________: “Himno de fuego y de cosechas”, Bohemia, 78 (17), Havana, April 25, 1986, pp. 19-21.

SAWYER, KENNETH: “Art and Artists”, New York Herald Tribune, Paris, January 20, 1954 [press clipping, n. p.].

SERRA, ALEJANDRO: “Servando Cabrera en la Galería de La Habana”, La Gaceta de Cuba, 3 (36), Havana, May 5, 1964, p. 8.

“Servando Cabrera”, Juventud Rebelde, Havana, October 14,1988, p. 8.

“Servando Cabrera Moreno. Décimo de una serie sobre pintores cubanos”, Nuestro Tiempo, 5 (22), Havana, March-April 1958, p. 24.

“Servando Cabrera Moreno”, Havana, October 1942 [press clipping, no more data].

STEPANEK, PAVEL: “Diez pintores cubanos en Praga”, Islas, Santa Clara, 9 (3), July-September 1967, pp. 337-339.

SUÁREZ, CARLOS: “Venturas y desventuras de “Habanera Tú”. La exposición de Servando Cabrera Moreno”, El Caimán Barbudo, 93, Havana, August 1975, pp. 25-26.

“Tendencias”, Spain, February-March 1953 [press clipping, no more data].

TORRIENTE, LOLÓ DE LA: “Cabrera Moreno” [press clipping, n. p.], Havana, May 5, 1964, p. 4. ______________: “Exposición de Servando Cabrera Moreno”, Unión, 1 (1), Havana, May-June 1962, pp. 150-151. ______________: “Nuevos pintores cubanos: Cabrera Moreno”, Bohemia, 59 (27), Havana, July 7,1967, pp. 102-103.

“Un amplio diapasón expresivo”, Juventud Rebelde, Havana, May 23, 1983 [press clipping, n. p.].

Interviews with Servando AQUILES: “El domingo de un joven pintor”, Diario de la Marina, Havana, February 5, 1956 [press clipping, n. p.].

ELADIO, JOSÉ: “Habla Cabrera Moreno”, Bohemia, 67 (28), Havana, July 11, 1975, p. 26.

FUMAGALLI JUSTINIANI, R. D.: “Habla un pintor cubano. Exhibirá varias obras en Italia”, Tiempo, Havana, February 5, 1956 [press clipping, n. p.].

GARZÓN CÉSPEDES, FRANCISCO: “Cabrera Moreno”, Juventud Rebelde, Havana, February 16, 1967 [press clipping, n. p.].

MENÉNDEZ, ALDO: “Habanera tú. Con Servando Cabrera Moreno”, Revolución y Cultura, 38, Havana, October 1975, pp. 34-37.

OTERO, JOSÉ MANUEL: “Del premio y su obra habla Servando Cabrera”, Granma, Havana, July 16, 1969 [press clipping, n. p.].

ROYERO, MAIDA: “20 años de Teatro Estudio”, Revolución y Cultura [press clipping, n. num.], Havana, March 1978, pp. 60-67.

“Servando Cabrera Moreno”, La Gaceta de Cuba, 2 (30), Havana, December 4, 1963, p. 14.

TRUJILLO, MARISOL: “Cuatro pintores en torno al cartel”, Cine Cubano, 1, Havana, July 1979, pp. 87-94.

Catalogues AYLLÓN, JOSÉ: Palabras al catálogo de la exposición Cabrera Moreno. Óleos y gouaches, Galería Caralt, Barcelona, October 17-30, 1953.

CEPERO MONTENEGRO, REINA: Words for the catalogue of the exhibition Las damas… de Servando, Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library, Havana, May 22-June 22, 2007 COSSÍO, FÉLIX DE: Words for the catalogue of Exposición de retratos al carbón por Servando Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, September 8-13, 1943.

DÍAZ, ROBERTO: Words for the catalogue of the exhibition Habanera tú, Havana Gallery, National Council of Culture, Havana, June 1975.

DU-BOUCHET, JULIO: Words for the catalogue of the exhibition El tema histórico en la pintura cubana (Historical 295

REFERENCES

______________: “La plástica combatiente de Servando Cabrera Moreno”, Bohemia, 53 (53), Havana, December 31, 1961, pp. 32-34.

POGOLOTTI, GRAZIELLA: “De Carlos Enríquez a la joven pintura”, Unión, 1 (1), Havana, May-June 1961, pp. 153-157. ______________: “Una excursión a la Europa del Este”, La Gaceta de Cuba, 5, Havana, September-October 2002, pp.

29-31. ______________: “Nueva pintura de Cuba”, La Gaceta de Cuba, 2 (30), Havana, December 4, 1963, pp. 2, 5, 7 y 14. ______________: “Pintura cubana en los países socialistas”, La Gaceta de Cuba, 1 (10), Havana, December 10, 1962, pp. 16-19. ______________: “Transformación de la pintura”, Unión, 4, Havana, July-August 1998, p. 30. ______________: “Un viaje con Servando”, La Gaceta de Cuba, 4, Havana, JulyAugust 1998, p. 30.

POGOSTINA, U.: “Dibujos de Servando Cabrera”, Novedades de Moscú, Moscow, August 1965 [press clipping, n. p.].

PORTUONDO, JOSÉ ANTONIO: “La galería de Nuestro Tiempo”, Nuestro Tiempo, 2 (5), Havana, May 1955, pp. 11-14.

RELOBA, XENIA: “Mirar a los 60.

Nostalgia de una década”, Correo de Cuba, 10, Havana, third quarter of 2004, pp. 31-36.

ROZALES, CRISTIAN: “El XXII Salón de Bellas Artes”, Avance, Havana, March 15, 1940 [press clipping, n. p.].

SÁNCHEZ HERNÁNDEZ, SONIA: “La plástica de Servando Cabrera Moreno en Bellas Artes”, Trabajadores, Havana, June 2, 1983, p. 2.

SANTANA, ANDRÉS ISAAC: “La apoteosis del falo, su posible sublimación en las subjetividades escindidas de la plástica cubana contemporánea”, Unión, Nueva Época, 11 (38-39), Havana, January-June 2001, pp. 42-53.

SANTOS MORAY, MERCEDES: “Las Habaneras”, Somos Jóvenes, 8 (65), March 1985, pp. 12-14.

Theme in Cuban Painting, commemorating the centennial of the War for Independence and Jose Martí’s death in combat), National Fine Arts Museum, Ministry of Culture, Havana, May 1995.

FORNAGUERA, MARIANA: Words for the catalogue of the Exposición de retratos al carbón por Servando Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, September 8-13, 1943.

MAÑACH, JORGE: Words for the catalogue of Exposición Cabrera Moreno, Asociación de Repórters, Havana, September 18-23, 1945.

MARIBONA, ARMANDO: Words for the catalogue of Exposición Cabrera Moreno, Asociación de Repórters, Havana, September 18-23, 1945. ______________: Words for the catalogue of Exposición de retratos al carbón por Servando Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, September 8-13, 1943.

MIRALLES, YANDRO: “Una mujer y su paso por la vida”, words for the catalogue of the exhibition Habanera diosa indiana, Servando Cabrera Moreno Library Museum, Havana, November 2009-January 2010.

MOSQUERA, GERARDO: Words for the catalogue of the exhibition Servando Cabrera Moreno 1923-1981. Homenaje en el 60 aniversario de su nacimiento, National Museum of Fine Arts, National Cultural Heritage Council, Ministry of Culture, Havana, May 27, 1983.

NEGRÍN, RENÉ: Words for the catalogue of the exhibition La transparencia de sus pasiones. Homenaje a Servando Cabrera Moreno, Servando Cabrera Moreno Art Gallery, Havana, November 1999.

PÉREZ HERNÁNDEZ, MARÍA ZORAIDA: “Sevilla en el tiempo de Servando”, words for the catalogue of the exhibition Todos los recuerdos de Sevilla, Servando Cabrera Moreno Library Museum, Havana, May 2008-May 2009.

POGOLOTTI, GRAZIELLA: Words for the catalogue of the exhibition Servando Cabrera Moreno. Pinturas y dibujos sobre 296

héroes, jinetes y parejas, Galería de La Habana, Havana, April 1964.

RODRÍGUEZ CRUZ, ROSEMARY: Words for the catalogue of the exhibition La conciencia del testigo (Antonia Eiriz, Tomás Sánchez y Servando Cabrera), Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library, Havana, March-June 2009.

ROMAÑACH, LEOPOLDO: Words for the catalogue of Exposición de retratos al carbón por Servando Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, September 8-13, 1943.

SABAS ALOMÁ, MARIBLANCA: Words for the catalogue of Exposición de retratos al carbón por Servando Cabrera Moreno, Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, September 8-13, 1943.

SÁNCHEZ CRESPO, OSVALDO: Words for the catalogue of Exhibition of Selected Works by Servando Cabrera Moreno, Christie’s, Amsterdam, Holland, October 10-15, 1988.

SAURA, ANTONIO: “Arte fantástico”, words for the catalogue of the exhibition Arte fantástico, Clan Gallery, Madrid, March-April 1953. _____________: “Notas sobre la pintura de Cabrera Moreno”, words on the catalogue of Exposición Cabrera Moreno, pinturas y dibujos /1966, Galería de La Habana, Havana, December 1966-January 1967.

SOTO, LUIS DE: Words for the catalogue of Exposición Cabrera Moreno, Asociación de Repórters, Havana, September 18-23, 1945.

TEXIDOR, JOAQUÍN: Words for the catalogue of the exhibition Cabrera Moreno. Óleos, Matanzas Gallery, February 3, 1952.

Unpublished papers CABRERA MORENO, SERVANDO: “Carta enviada a sus familiares desde Sevilla en mayo de 1978”, MBSCM Patrimonial Funds. _____________: “Informe del viaje realizado por España entre 1978-1979”, MBSCM Patrimonial Funds.

“Dedicatoria inédita de Margarita Moreno Alcázar a su hijo Servando Cabrera Moreno”, dated May 28, 1944; the book belongs to the MBSCM Patrimonial Funds.

297

© Enrique de la Uz

Index of works by Servando Cabrera Moreno A Abrazo de los sentidos, El (1981, oil on canvas,

Bayamo (1979, tempera on cardboard,

185 x 84.5 cm, MBSCM collection), [2]

515 x 432 mm, private collection), 167

Abstracción (1951, oil on canvas, 85 x 78.5 cm,

Beso (1968, tempera on canvas, 77 x 102 cm,

MNBA collection), 61 Abstracción (1951, oil on canvas, 89 x 79.5 cm, MNBA collection), 60 Abstracción (c. 1951, oil on canvas, 96 x 95 cm, MNBA collection), 62 Abstracción (1953, oil on canvas, 97 x 195.5 cm, MNBA collection), 66-67 Abstracción (1954, oil on canvas, 100.5 x 79.5 cm, MNBA collection), 68 Alicia Alonso en Giselle (1946, oil on canvas, 121.8 x 69.5 cm, Museum of Dance collection), 37 Amalia (1959, mixed on cardboard, 585 x 370 mm; SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2009), 96 Amistad (1975, ink on cardboard, 660 x 810 mm, MBSCM collection), 188 Amor joven y desconocido (1979, oil on canvas, 139 x 179.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 203 Antorcha, La (from the series La soledad de un autorretrato, 1977, ink on cardboard, 550 x 750 mm, private collection), 184 Apolo de Luyanó, El (1974, ink on cardboard, 710 x 510 mm, MBSCM collection), 193 A quién le importa (1981, oil on canvas, 120.3 x 149 cm, MBSCM collection), 207 Arabesca diosa indiana (1973, oil on canvas, 150 x 180 cm, MNBA collection), 170 Arenal de Sevilla (1980, oil on canvas, 94 x 180 cm, MBSCM collection), 152-153 Asesinato del brigadista y el campesino, El (1962, oil on canvas, 100 x 82 cm, private collection), 113 Así amanece Cuba (1976, mural painting details, oil on canvas, 260 x 900 cm, embajada de Cuban embassy in Canada), 175

B Bandeja para Bautista, Una (1981, oil on canvas, 116 x 96 cm, MNBA collection), 209 Barrenderas (1962, ink on cardboard, 300 x 410 mm, MBSCM collection), 114 298

MNBA collection), 131 Beso (1968, ink on cardboard, 507 x 764 mm, MNBA collection), 130 Beso II (1966, oil on canvas, 138.5 x 72 cm, MNBA collection), 129 Beso 5 (1966, oil on canvas, 86.7 x 83 cm; SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2011), 128 Bombardeo del 15 de abril (1961, oil on canvas, 72 x 131 cm, MNBA collection), 111

C Cante para Sevilla (1977, oil on canvas, 149 x 119 cm, MBSCM collection), 152 Capullo (1945, oil on canvas, 102.5 x 78.5 cm; SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2011), 48 Carboneros (1954, charcoal on paper, 980 x 670 mm, private collection), 74 Carboneros de El Mégano, Los (1955, oil on canvas, 65 x 94 cm, private collection), 75 Carnaval (1957, tempera on paper, 740 x 590 mm, MNBA collection), 82 Cercanos días del amor, Los (1981, oil on canvas, 95 x 114 cm, MBSCM collection), 302 Che (1972, ink on paper, 1,100 x 750 mm, Museum of the City of Havana collection), 234 Cheo, carbonero poeta (1954, charcoal on paper, 980 x 670 mm, private collection), 73 Churrera de Madrid, La (1954, charcoal on cardboard, 955 x 690 mm, Servando Cabrera Moreno. Dibujo), 69

ink on cardboard, 550 x 750 mm, private collection), 185 Con plomo en la sangre (1971, oil on canvas, 91 x 204 cm, private collection), 244 Conciencia de ser yo, La (1981, oil on canvas, 158 x 124 cm, MBSCM collection), 14 Cordillera, La (1972, oil on canvas, 148 x 362 cm, ICAIC collection), 176-177 Coubre, La (1961, charcoal on paper, 1 000 x 635 mm, MNBA collection), 16 Cuando el aire tiembla (1981, oil on canvas, 80 x 180.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 106-107 Cubano llamado Juan Bruno, Un (1976, oil on canvas, 120 x 102 cm, Museum of the City of Havana collection), 182 Cuestionario (1967, oil on canvas, 150.5 x 180 cm, UNEAC collection), 134

D Damas de Buenavista, Las (1957, oil on canvas, 105 x 125 cm, MNBA collection), 85 Declaración de La Habana (1960, ink on paper, 560 x 760 mm, MNBA collection), 111 Del ensayo (1948, oil on canvas and flat board, 60.5 x 45.5 cm, MNBA collection), 42 Día de la Victoria, El (1963, oil on canvas, 117 x 84 cm, private collection), 118 Día de vida para Isabel, Un (1981, oil on canvas, 98 x 129 cm, MBSCM collection), 253 Dios de menta, El (1979, ink on cardboard, 502 x 650 mm, MBSCM collection), 190 Dos figuras (1959, ink on paper, 600 x 770 mm, MNBA collection), 95

Columna humana (1965, oil on canvas, 240 x 135.5 cm, MNBA collection), 136 Columna humana No. 2, (c. 1966, oil on canvas, 147 x 98 cm, private collection), 243 Columna humana No. 7 (1966, oil on canvas, 114.5 x 87.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 137 Columna humana 8 (1967, oil on canvas, 140 x 164 cm, private collection), 250 Combate, El (1960, oil on canvas, 115 x 100 cm, Museum of the City of Havana collection), 105 Como un veintiocho de mayo (from the series La soledad de un autorretrato, 1977,

E Entrada, La (1966, oil on canvas, 140 x 268 cm, MNBA collection), 132-133 Estela (1969, oil on canvas, 95 x 70 cm, private collection), 135 Estoy contento (1977, oil on canvas, 151.5 x 62.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 212 Estudio (Nota de color) (1948, oil on canvas and flat board, 35 x 32.5 cm, MNBA collection), 50 Evidio junto al retrato que le hiciera Servando en 1972 (oil on canvas, 68 x 96 cm, private

collection), 248

F Fachada (1955, oil on canvas, 101 x 61.5 cm, MNBA collection), 77 Fidel (1980, oil on canvas, 100 x 76 cm, private collection), 180 Figura (1957, tempera on cardboard, 735 x 584 mm, MNBA collection), 225 Figura (1959, tempera & ink on flat board, 450 x 345 mm, MNBA collection), 98 Figura (c. 1957, tempera & ink on flat board, 550 x 398 mm, MNBA collection), 90

Hojas de otoño caen en la meseta, Las (1977, oil on canvas, 118.5 x 149.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 199 Hombre con una horca (1954, coal on paper, 640 x 481 mm, MNBA collection), 70 Hombre se levanta, Un (1972, oil on canvas, 156 x 200 cm, ICAIC collection), 162-163 Homenaje a la soledad (1970, oil on canvas, 175.5 x 326 cm, MNBA collection), 217

Figura con paloma (1959, tempera & ink on flat board, 350 x 260 mm, MNBA collection), 92 Flor de carne (1969, ink on cardboard, 648 x 500 mm, MNBA collection), 143 Flores dulces para Marta Jiménez (1972, oil on canvas, 136 x 85.5 cm, private collection), 239 Fruto, El (1964, oil on canvas, 85 x 130 cm, MNBA collection), 116-117 Fuente de la vida, La (1981, oil on canvas, 124.5 x 159.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 272-273

G Gemelos, Los (1974, ink on cardboard, 715 x 512 mm, MBSCM collection), 18 Géminis no tienen tiempo, Los (1969, oil on canvas, 119.4 x 191 cm, MBSCM collection), 245 Georgia (1948, oil on canvas, 51 x 39.5 cm, MNBA collection), 46 Gloriosos días presentes, Los (1979, oil on canvas, 80 x 121 cm, Museum of the City of Havana collection), 164 Guajiro (1975, mixed on paper, 510 x 635 mm, private collection), 166 Guajiro con cañas (1947, oil on canvas, 40.6 x 35.6 cm, private collection), 39 Guiteras (1972, ink on paper, 1,100 x 750 mm, Museum of the City of Havana collection), 218

Isabel y las brisas (1973, oil on canvas, 99 x 119 cm, MBSCM collection), 173

J Jacinto (1973, pencil & crayon on paper, 890 x 605 mm, MBSCM collection), 17 Jardín (1963, oil on canvas, 197.5 x 119 cm, Cuban Council of State collection), 119 Joven pintura, La (1979, oil on canvas, 119 x 161 cm, MNBA collection), 204-205 Juantorena (1977, oil on canvas, 149 x 100 cm, private collection), 181 Julio Antonio en Obispo (1981, oil on canvas, 100 x 78 cm, private collection), 183

L Largo camino de las nostalgias, El (1981, oil on canvas, 75 x 160 cm, MBSCM collection), 214-215 Lecho, El (1955, oil on canvas, 82 x 121 cm, MNBA collection), 79 Lecho tibio, El (1980, oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm, private collection), 198 Llego tarde para el mundo (1979, oil on canvas,

Habana (1948, oil on canvas, 101.2 x 77 cm, Museum of the City of Havana collection), 45 Habana, Cuba (1975, oil on canvas, 179.5 x 150.5 cm, MNBA collection), 169 Héroes bajo el sol, Los (1959, oil on canvas, 74 x 104.5 cm, MNBA collection), 102-103

SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2009), 226 Milicias campesinas (1961, oil on canvas, 140.5 x 201 cm, MNBA collection), 108-109 Molote (1966, oil on canvas, 171 x 352 cm, MNBA collection), 126-127 Moncada, El (1974, oil on canvas, 176 x 498 cm, Motivo de ballet (c. 1940, oil on canvas, 31 x 29 cm, private collection), 36 Muchacha de la calle Sitio (1975, plaka on cardboard, 500 x 650 mm, private collection), 168 Muchacha de las rosas de arena No. 1 (1977, ink on cardboard, 650 x 500 mm, MNBA collection), [6] Muchacho (1948, oil on canvas, 45.5 x 41 cm, MNBA collection), 40 Mucho más temprano que tarde (1980, oil on canvas, 152.2 x 63.8 cm, private collection), 202 Muerte y vida (1972, oil on canvas, 128 x 237.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 194-195 Mujer ante la ventana (1959, ink on paper, 352 x 278 mm, MNBA collection), 97 Mujer con pez (1958, tempera on cardboard, 990 x 645 mm, private collection), 88 Mujer en la ventana (n. d., tempera & ink on cardboard, 538 x 449 mm, MNBA collection), 91 Mujer en verde (1960, plaka on cardboard, 1,040 x 790 mm, private collection), 241 Mujer y caballo (1959, ink on paper, 731 x 838 mm, MNBA collection), 94

75.3 x 139.6 cm, MBSCM collection), 52-53

N

Lo que nos pertenece (1981, oil on canvas, 108 x 178 cm, MBSCM collection), 254-255

Nacida en mayo (1975, oil on canvas, 80 x 90.5 cm, private collection), 249

M Macho puro (n. d., oil on canvas, 99.5 x 80.5 cm, MNBA collection), 206 Madre del cordero, La (1981, oil on canvas, 75 x 100 cm, MBSCM collection), 172 Mayo incita y apena (1979, oil on canvas,

H

219 x 140.5 cm, MNBA collection), 211 Mesa, La (1959, mixed on canvas, 92 x 58 cm;

ICAIC collection), 178-179

I

Figura (n. d., oil on paper, 518 x 471 mm, MNBA collection), 41

Memoria de los borrados, La (1977, oil on canvas,

200 x 121 cm, private collection), 27 Mayo de todas las flores (1981, oil on canvas, 148 x 99 cm, MBSCM collection), 13 Medardo (1974, tempera on cardboard, 560 x 710 mm, MBSCM collection), 165 Mejores días de nuestro año, Los (1975, oil on canvas, 100 x 120 cm, MNBA collection), 208

Navidades cubanas (1959, ink & tempera on cardboard, 390 x 365 mm, private collection), 93 Nicasio (1974, tempera on cardboard, 575 x 730 mm, MBSCM collection), 164 Niño de la alberca, El (1954, coal on paper, 1,000 x 698 mm, MNBA collection), 69 Niños de Trinidad, Los (1954, coal on cardboard, 1,000 x 710 mm, Servando Cabrera Moreno.

Dibujo), 72 Nuestro Pancho (1976, oil on canvas, 120 x 102 cm, Museum of the City of Havana collection), 219 299

Nuestros isleños (1976, ink on cardboard, 500 x 650 mm, MBSCM collection), 189

O Origen (1956, oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm, private collection), 78 Otra vez Sevilla (1972, oil on canvas, 165 x 300 cm, MBSCM collection), 154-155

P Pagoda, La (1979, oil on canvas, 134.5 x 60 cm, private collection), 197 Palmar (1963, oil on canvas, 162 x 92.5 cm, Cuban Council of State collection), 24 Para acostumbrarse a ese gusto (1981, oil on canvas, 95 x 115 cm, MBSCM collection), 144-145 Pareja (1950, oil on canvas, 69 x 56.5 cm, MNBA collection), 55 Pareja (1964, ink on paper, 648 x 500 mm, MNBA collection), 16 Parte del tiempo amado (1979, ink on cardboard, 540 x 740 mm, MBSCM collection), 28-29 Patio abierto (1959, oil on canvas, 89 x 99.5 cm, private collection), 104 Pedro Romero (1978, acrylic on cardboard, 495 x 715 mm, MBSCM collection), 186 Pepe el Romano (1978, acrylic on cardboard, 495 x 715 mm, MBSCM collection), 187 Personaje II (1965, oil on canvas, 144 x 113 cm, MNBA collection), 139 Playa (n. d., oil on flat board, 62 x 39 cm, MNBA collection), 43 Playa Girón (1961, oil on canvas, 72 x 130.5 cm, private collection), 110 Plenos poderes, Los (1973, oil on canvas, 155.5 x 200 cm, Cuban Council of State collection), 123 Presencia joven (1973, mural painting details, oil on canvas, Vladimir Ilich Lenin Vocational School collection), 174 y 217 Prólogo sin palabras (1975, oil on canvas, 76 x 119 cm, MBSCM collection), 22-23

R Rebeldes (1964, ink on paper, 500 x 650 mm, MNBA collection), 121 Retrato de Begoña (1955, oil on canvas, 75 x 53 cm, private collection), 76 Retrato de Núñez de Villavicencio (1945, oil on canvas and flat board, 89.5 x 79.5 cm, MNBA collection), 32 300

Retrato de Raquel Lázaro de Casagrán (n. d., oil on canvas, 91.5 x 76 cm, MNBA collection),

U Untitled (1951, tempera on cardboard, 870 x 560 mm, MBSCM collection), 63

49 Retrato de Vicente Revuelta (n. d., tempera on canvas, 61 x 47 cm, MNBA collection), 81 Rómulo y Remo (1981, oil on canvas, 118.7 x 148 cm, MBSCM collection), 229

Untitled (1953, oil on canvas, 98 x 63 cm; SUBASTAHABANA catalogue, 2007), 64 Untitled (1953, oil on canvas, 132 x 102 cm, private collection), 65 Untitled (1957, silkscreen, 593 x 745 mm,

S Sacrificio, El (1968, tríptico, oil on canvas, 148 x 88 cm, MNBA collection), 236-237 Saludos eternos para Sevilla (1970, oil on canvas, 270 x 140 cm, MNBA collection), 148 Seminarista de los ojos verdes, El (n. d., oil on canvas, 80.5 x 68 cm, private collection), 34 Sevilla en el horizonte (1979, oil on canvas, 148 x 198.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 156-157 Sevilla siempre Sevilla (1976, oil on canvas, 76 x 193 cm, MBSCM collection), 150-151 Sevilla y el tiempo (1975, oil on canvas, 139 x 90.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 149 Siempre María (1974, oil on canvas, 79.5 x 94 cm, MBSCM collection), 171 Siesta en Santiago (1948, oil on canvas, 56 x 67.5 cm, private collection), 47 Silencio, El (1970, oil on canvas, 75 x 175.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 200-201 Silencio y la esperanza, El (1981, oil on canvas, 152 x 127 cm, MBSCM collection), 10 Soldados en Sofía (1962, ink on cardboard, 412 x 300 mm, MBSCM collection), 115 Soledad y Sevilla, La (1981, oil on canvas, 198 x 98.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 157 Somos y estamos (1972, oil on canvas, 167 x 201 cm, private collection), 160

T Territorio (1963, oil on canvas, 125 x 189 cm, MNBA collection), 112 Tiempo joven (1970, oil on canvas, 76.5 x 153 cm, MNBA collection), 122 Tientos (1979, oil on canvas, 100 x 80.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 231 Toda la pintura (1974, oil on canvas, 275 x 315 cm, private collection), 212-213 Toma del cuerpo por un cubano, La (1974, oil on canvas, 206 x 111.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 210 Tres figuras (1959, ink on paper, 450 x 287 mm, MNBA collection), 227 Trinchera de Caná, La (1976, tempera on paper, 495 x 640 mm, MBSCM collection), 25

MBSCM collection), 84 Untitled (1957, silkscreen, 1,000 x 720 mm, private collection), 86 Untitled (1957, tempera on cardboard, 760 x 550 mm, MBSCM collection), 83 Untitled (1958, tempera on cardboard, 505 x 373 mm, MBSCM collection), 89 Untitled (1958, tempera on cardboard, 750 x 1,010 mm, ICAIC collection), 87 Untitled (1959, tempera on cardboard, 570 x 350 mm, private collection), 99 Untitled (1965, ink on paper, 502 x 760 mm, private collection), 138 Untitled (1969, oil on hardboard, 915 x 1,205 mm, MNBA collection), 141 Untitled (1969, ink on cardboard, 730 x 505 mm, private collection), 142 Untitled (1971, ink on cardboard, 430 x 350 mm, MBSCM collection), 140 Untitled (1971, ink on paper, 400 x 510 mm, MBSCM collection), 192 Untitled (1975, ink on paper, 1,020 x 825 mm, MNBA collection), 161 Untitled (1979, ink on cardboard, 500 x 620 mm, MBSCM collection), 191 Untitled (self-portrait) (1939, pencil on paper, private collection), 275 Untitled (c. 1956, tempera on cardboard, 92 x 74 cm, private collection), 277 Untitled [Macheteros] (1964, ink on cardboard, 537 x 1,216 mm, MBSCM collection), 120 Untitled [Portrait of Inocencia] (1960, oil on canvas, 101.5 x 76.3 cm, private collection), 57 Untitled [Portrait of the mother] (1960, oil on canvas, 92 x 59 cm, MBSCM collection), 101

V Vaivén de la luces violetas, El (1981, oil on canvas, 148.5 x 99 cm, MBSCM collection), 247 Vecina roja (1947, oil on canvas, 38 x 30.5 cm, private collection), 51 Vendedor de curritos (1954, coal on paper, 965 x 688 mm, MNBA collection), 71 Vendedoras de flores (1962, ink on cardboard,

Verdegris (1951, oil on canvas, 132 x 91.5 cm, MNBA collection), 59 Vivien (1945, oil on canvas, 75 x 62.5 cm, MBSCM collection), 35 Vuelve Sevilla (1978, oil on canvas, 149.5 x 99.7 cm, MBSCM collection), 158

Y Y Sevilla! (1974, oil on canvas, 151 x 200 cm, MBSCM collection), 159 Y sucedió en mi tiempo (1979, oil on canvas, 150 x 120.3 cm, Museum of the City of Havana collection), 122 Yo quiero (1976, oil on canvas, 97 x 123 cm, private collection), 196-197

Z Zonazul (1951, oil on canvas, 96.5 x 81 cm, MNBA collection), 58

ÍNDICE DE OBRAS DE SERVANDO CABRERA MORENO

300 x 415 mm, MBSCM collection), 114

One of the paintings Servando was working on when he died. On the back was written: “Los cercanos días del amor 1981” (The Early Days of Love) Oil on canvas, 95 x 114 cm MBSCM collection

Claudia González Machado (Havana, 1987). Since her graduation in 2010 from the University of Havana with a B.A. in History of Art, she has worked as a museum specialist at the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library, where she curated The Source of Life. Servando’s Erotics Oil Paintings (2013), Cabrera Moreno’s Collections (2012), A Discovered Magic. Servando in the fifties (2011), Remake (2010) and several exhibits of Servando’s collections. She has given numerous interviews for radio and television programs, and written articles for the Museum’s website. She regularly lectures on the life and work of the artist.

She has completed several graduate programs and courses related to curatorship, museology, film and creative writing, and received a diploma in Architecture of Havana from the University of Arts of Cuba (ISA). She is the author of the book El riesgo de la herejía. Cartografía de la crítica y el discurso fílmico en la revista Cine Cubano, which covers fifty years of the prestigious magazine’s literary life. She participated in the 19th Film Critics conference held in Camagüey (2013), with the paper “Cuban Cinema: in search of lost dialogue?”. She received recognition for curating the exhibition dedicated to the bicentennial of the independence of Latin America and the Caribbean, at the 20th International Book Fair (2011) held in Cuba.

Servando Cabrera Moreno. The Embrace of the Senses is a compendium of research on the life and art of Cabrera Moreno (1923-1981). It includes works from the main collections of the Cuban government, complemented by significant contributions from private collections. The chapters, using titles from Servando Cabrera’s paintings, include critical texts, exclusive interviews, over three hundred images, a chronology of the artist, and a note on the museum that houses his legacy. The reader is guided through the many facets of the artist: painter, teacher, collector, promoter, and above all, a man with integrity and dignity who never faltered or betrayed his beliefs. This book is a dream come true, the product of the determination of those who believe that with this publication the silence surrounding Servando has been definitively broken and only hope lies ahead.

Lourdes Ă lvarez Betancourt Director, Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library