Bernardo G. Barros Gómez

Distinguished Cuban journalist and writer. He used the pseudonym Ariel. He stood out as an art critic and lecturer. He published one novel and left another unfinished, and also published short stories.

He was born in the Havana neighborhood of Guanabacoa. He completed his high school education in La Habana. He began studying Law, but abandoned it to dedicate himself to journalism. Around 1908 he collaborated in El Fígaro —of which he became editorial secretary— and Heraldo de Cuba where, between the years 1914 and 1917, he remained on its editorial staff collaborating in its fixed section "La vida literaria."

His works also appeared in La Discusión, El Mundo, Diario de la Marina, Letras, El Mundo Ilustrado, Revista de Bellas Artes, Social, Cuba Contemporánea (of which he was an editor), Revista de América (París). Some were reproduced in El Universal and El Tiempo Ilustrado, of México, as well as in El Universal, of Caracas, and Variedades, of Lima.

He directed the Diario de Sesiones del Senado. He was a founder of the Sociedad de Conferencias and the Sociedad Teatro Cubano.

Bernardo G. Barros was elected member of the Academia Nacional de Artes y Letras when he was just over 30 years old, but he died before taking possession of his corresponding seat. Life—or rather, death—played a very bad trick on this talented journalist and author whose signature became familiar in the Cuban press. He left written his admission work, titled "Origen y desarrollo de la pintura en Cuba," published in the pamphlet Discursos pronunciados en la sesión solemne celebrada por esta corporación a la memoria del académico electo fallecido Sr. Bernardo G. Barros y Gómez, on May 12, 1924.

Works
Novels
La senda nueva (1913)
La red (which remained unfinished)

Translations
Silhouettes allemandes, by Paul Louis Hervier
L'Adjudant Bancit, by Marcel Prévost

Of this author Max Henríquez Ureña would note "that he became known in the press with light chronicles in an elegant and pleasant style."

He thus developed an intense intellectual life. He was one of the speakers who took the floor during the years of greatest activity of the Sociedad de Conferencias, alongside other illustrious figures of the era (Juan Miguel Dihigo, Rafael Montoro, Enrique José Varona, Carlos de la Torre, Salvador Salazar and Eusebio Hernández, to name a few). These lectures had great reach among the population, as they circulated throughout the Island, either summarized or in full, through the press.

In 1910 he appears —alongside José Antonio Ramos and Max Henríquez Ureña— among the founders of the Sociedad de Fomento del Teatro, to which many other intellectuals interested in stimulating the development of theatrical creation in Cuba adhered.

Barros only published one book, La caricatura contemporánea, in two volumes, published in Madrid in 1918. He left written a work titled "Origen y desarrollo de la pintura en Cuba," which was published in the pamphlet Discursos pronunciados en la sesión solemne celebrada por esta corporación a la memoria del académico electo fallecido Sr. Bernardo G. Barros y Gómez, on May 12, 1924, that is, two years after the death of its author, which occurred on May 20, 1922.

Two novels and several short stories, as well as translations and abundant art criticism, in addition to his work as a lecturer, made Bernardo G. Barros one of the best-known literary figures of Cuba a century ago.