Manuel del Barrio Llorens

Cuban illustrator, painter, caricaturist, and set designer.

Born in La Habana.

He studied at the San Alejandro School of Painting and Sculpture. He was a landscape student in the studio of painter Valentín Sanz Carta. He completed his studies in the United States where he began his work in scenography. He earned a degree in Civil Law from the UH (1892).

He was an illustrator and caricaturist for several newspapers and magazines, such as La Habana Elegante and El Fígaro. In La Habana he studied with painter Gabriel Osmundo Gómez as an apprentice in his workshop.

During Weyler's repression he was an art correspondent for the American newspaper The Journal. He excelled in the specialty of scenography through his work for the Albisu theater, through his designs for "El bergantín Adelante", "Cuadros disolventes", "La Dolorosa" and "Yumurí".

His watercolors were highly successful with critics and sales during an exhibition he held in Los Ángeles, California. He participated in the Annual Salon of Cuban Painters and Sculptors in 1917.

He painted landscapes in Pinar del Río and figurative subjects; his painting shows a realistic style.

At the Albisu theater, where he continued working for several years. There he created, among many others, the designs for the premiere of the opera Yumurí (1898), by E. Sánchez de Fuentes and the Spanish sainetes La viejecita, La revoltosa, La fiesta de san Antón (all in 1899). He collaborated in various Havana publications and founded the humorous weekly La Broma (1912).