Eduardo Abela Villarreal

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He began his work career as a tobacco worker, showing a strong artistic vocation at twenty years of age and for this reason in 1912 he moved to La Habana and entered the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts.

For years he worked in graphic journalism as a caricaturist. He began publishing humorous drawings in Havana newspapers.

He lived and worked in Spain from 1921 to 1924, the year he returned to Cuba and in 1925 he revitalized the famous popular character "El Bobo," which had existed since the colonial period, and which became an instrument of struggle against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. He joined the work of painters who, around the Revista Avance, introduced more contemporary artistic languages and exhibited in the New Art exhibition; he traveled again to Europe and lived two years in Paris with a success that allowed him to exhibit at the Galería Zak.

Upon his return to Cuba in 1929, he returned to caricature and joined the political campaign against Machado through his ironic humorous drawings until the dictator's fall (1933) which marked the end of his journalistic work, El Bobo ceased and Abela was compelled to remake himself as a painter. During the 1920s he cultivated a painting based on Cuban themes, with titles such as La comparsa, Camino de Regla and Los funerales de papá Montero.

When Abela returned to painting, he did so under the influence of muralism, adopting the peasant theme, which he considered more true to Cuban reality; another important circumstance of Abela's new painting is the visit he made to Italy, where he was fascinated by Renaissance painting, the result is a small series of works that make up his brief "classical" and "creole" period; some are those that have ended up identifying him over time: Santa Fe and Guajiros, one of the paradigmatic works of modern Cuban painting, in which representative and thematic canons were established.

He created the very important Free Studio for Painters and Sculptors, for unconventional teaching and truly encouraging artistic creation. Between 1942 and 1952 he carried out diplomatic missions in Mexico and Guatemala; in the latter country he received the National Prize for Painting (1947). There he also created El Caos, which marks a substantial transformation of his expressive language. After returning to Cuba in 1954, he produced notably in quantity and quality small jewels, which he exhibited in numerous exhibitions; among them a retrospective at the Galería de La Habana, 1964. After the triumph of the Revolution he served Cuban diplomacy.

Notable works: Guajiros, La comparsa. Creator of the character "El Bobo"

Links: https://www.ecured.cu/index.php/Eduardo_Abela
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduardo_Abela
https://www.galeriacubarte.cult.cu/g_artista.php?item=2&lang=sp
https://www.cnap.cult.cu/huellas/abela.htm