Alejandro Gumersindo Alonso Rodríguez

Art critic, ballet and dance specialist; excellent curator who earned the Curatorship Award from the International Association of Art Critics; historian and author of books; journalist and photographer by necessity; has written numerous catalogs of exhibitions by Cuban artists. Member of the International Association of the Plastic Arts, the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC) and the Cuban Section of the International Association of Art Critics.

He was born in Havana, son of Spanish immigrants, his father came from Asturias and was a merchant, his mother was a homemaker and came from Galicia, so he had no artistic influences from them and had to study Commercial Sciences at the University of Havana, although he always loved art.

After 1959 he was able to study what he had always yearned for, at the School of Arts and Letters of the University of Havana and there he graduated in 1969 with a degree in Art History from the University of Havana.

Journalist who was part of the editorial staff of Juventud Rebelde for more than 20 years, art critic and editor, a body of work that has remained in the memory of the visual arts, dance and cinema of recent decades.

Technical Vice Director of the National Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Decorative Arts and Castillo de la Real Fuerza in Havana, since 1985.

He was responsible for that museography of the Cuban art rooms of the eighties that has still not been surpassed today, even though there has been greater space for exhibition. I hope the way he arranged the painting and drawing of the colonial period is remembered, leaving no doubt about the importance of both forms of creation.

From 1990 on, he dedicates himself exclusively to directing the National Museum of Contemporary Cuban Ceramics, a center that he grew until bringing its collection to 1200 pieces from 128 artists.

For a long time AGA was also the chronicler of the National Ballet, to whose enjoyment and better understanding by the general public he contributed. But it was undoubtedly to the visual arts of Cuba and its different manifestations, to which he dedicated his energy, his intelligence and his sensitivity in the exercise of that complex and undervalued work of researcher, historian and art critic.

He gave lectures on Cuban art in countries throughout Latin America and Europe. Rapporteur of the Third Latin American Photography Meeting, 1988; member of the organizing committee of the Ceramic Millennium event, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1999; speaker at the Architecture Biennial, Havana, 2004, and at the International Convention of studies on Cecilia Valdés, myth and reality, Milan, Italy, 2005.

He was a juror for prestigious national and international competitions; consultant for the Cuban art area of the exhibition The Art in Latin America, The Hayward Gallery, London, Great Britain, 1986. As a museologist, he has conceived and developed different projects in Cuba, Latin America and Europe.

When AGA died at age 82, the history of Cuban plastic arts in the second half of the twentieth century cannot dispense with his critical assessments.

Publications
Among his publications stand out:
Art Déco in Old Havana
Amelia Peláez
Mariano, One and Multiple
The Sculptural Work of Rita Longa
Cuban Novecento
Sosabravo. The Three Dimensions
"Sleeping Beauty" in Havana
Amelia Peláez (on painting, ceramics, the house)
In co-authorship he published the volumes:
Houses and Things of Cuba
Automobiles of the American Dream in Cuba
Havana Déco
Sosabravo (paintings, drawings, prints and collages)
Towards Optimism Through the Path of the Monstrous: Alfredo Sosabravo. University of Havana Magazine, April-June, 1968
Sosabravo Original and Diverse. Havana, Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1999

Awards and Recognition
Best Curatorship Award, 1988.
Guy Pérez Cisneros National Prize for Art Criticism, 1999.
José Antonio Fernández de Castro National Prize for Cultural Journalism, for lifetime achievement, 2004.
Order of Merit for Polish Culture, 1988.
Order for Cuban Culture, 1999.