Secundino Bermúdez Delgado

Renowned Cuban painter, called the last master of the second generation of the Cuban avant-garde of the twentieth century.

With his death in 2008, a golden age of Cuban painting came to an end, the painting that dazzled spectators and critics since its emergence in the 1940s, when a group of young painters and sculptors established the existence of a solid innovative movement characterized by the quality and originality of their artistic proposals.

In his first period, Cundo Bermúdez's painting oscillated between Renaissance classicism and fascination with popular art. Extraordinary evidence of his love for the classical is provided by the Portrait of Luisita Caballero (1938) and the Portrait of Fina and Bella García Marruz (1940). However, the definitive consecration of his work is linked to his love of urban life and the traditional customs of the common man. Thus appears the first of his consecrating works in which his style is established, The Balcony (1941), a loving glorification of the city of La Habana and its cherished characters. Cundo discovers the essence of his art in the splendor of the everyday. In the contemporary recreation of popular scenes such as The Barbershop, The Billiard Hall, The Shoeshine Boy, or The Comadres, the artist finds the core motifs of his painting, elevated to the category of Cuban archetypes.

It is precisely in the 1940s that Cundo Bermúdez's painting acquired its definitive profile, around which it would move, from the 1950s onward, in variations of emphasis and forms, between the flat and the volumetric, between representation and abstraction. An occasional landscape painter, painter of still lifes or portraits, of musicians or acrobats, what defines his best painting are his scenes drawn from the Cuban environment and the domestic interiors that were refined over the years until becoming mythical spaces.

Cundo Bermúdez, an artist of extraordinary creative productivity, maintained his pictorial work at a high level until his final days. Illnesses could not overcome his unshakeable will nor force him to abandon his brushes and colors. As Cundo himself expressed in a definitive phrase: "Painting is the cane of my life, I live to paint."

At age 13 he began his high school studies and in 1930 he enrolled at the well-known Academy of San Alejandro, where he studied painting for two years. The painter himself notes "A relative of mine who noticed my drawings took me to the academy of San Alejandro so that I could learn to paint. But I left there right away. I didn't like the teaching (...)

The university strikes of '33, when Machado fell, and later the student protests against Batista, extended my high school years."

In 1934 he began Diplomatic Law Studies at the University – to please his family – but the closure of the Institution only allowed him to graduate in 1941.

In 1937 he worked at the magazine Selecta, founded by López Serrano, owner of the bookstore La Moderna Poesía. Before that, he had exhibited with four young artists in Albear Park in 1937, where his paintings "Dancer," "Streets of My School," "Chloroform," "Portrait of Rafael Llerandi," and "Exit from the Studio" were displayed. He was the only one from the group that exhibited there who later achieved international prominence. In 1938, under the auspices of the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Education, the "National Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture" was organized at the Castillo de la Fuerza. Bermúdez had a prominent participation.

That same year: "In 1938 I went to Mexico to study drawing. There I was very impressed by Mexican painting and its themes." He studied at the Academy of San Carlos. He could not hide his admiration for the works of figures such as Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, especially those created by them before they exposed their political commitments through art. He became friends with Rufino Tamayo.

Upon returning to La Habana his activity was multifaceted: "At that time I was studying, working, and painting. Later, in 1940, he participates in an exhibition in the Dominican Republic, and in 1941 in the "Exhibition of Contemporary Cuban Art" at the Lyceum of La Habana, where he sells his first painting: "Two Children." This is followed in 1942 by another exhibition titled "Some Contemporary Painters" and his first formal individual exhibition, also at the Lyceum of La Habana, in 1942. At that time he felt very influenced by the great Cuban painters of the previous generation: Amelia Peláez, Carlos Enríquez, and others" – the artist explains.

In 1943, an "Exhibition of Modern Cuban Painting and Sculpture" is inaugurated, organized by José Gómez Sicre at the Hispano-Cuban Cultural Institution in La Habana. The Mexican David Alfaro Siqueiros attends and says the following about Bermúdez: "Cundo Bermúdez represents boldness in the plastic arts. He knows how to build in a synchronized manner. With tones and foregrounds situated in pictorial depth, in counterposition, he builds and organizes, sometimes in an almost miraculous way. I believe that this artist has had great importance in the range of chromatic colors of modern Cuban painting."

The year 1944 was transcendental not only for Bermúdez but for Cuban painting. The Exhibition of Cuban Painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA) is inaugurated.

The museum's director, Alfred H. Barr, says that Bermúdez's work is "humorously archaic, but vigorous and original with its metallic color harmonies."

The exhibition at MOMA marks the beginning of Cundo Bermúdez's international artistic career. Currently, two of his paintings, "The Balcony" and "The Barbershop," are part of the museum's permanent collection.

From the second half of the 1940s, Bermúdez exhibits in Kansas City, San Francisco, the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico, and the Palace of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires, all in 1946 alone.

He carries out exhibitions in Connecticut, Haiti, and La Habana in 1947. He exhibits in Stockholm in 1949.

His acclaimed passage through the world does not stop. He exhibits in several countries in America and Europe. His exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1951 and in Munich in 1952 stand out.

That same year he is also present at the XXVI Venice Biennale alongside his friends and compatriots Mario Carreño, Víctor Manuel, Luis Martínez Pedro, José Mijares, Felipe Orlando, Amelia Peláez, René Portocarrero, and others. It was a great moment not only for him but for Cuban art.

On March 6, 1952, he traveled to Europe for the first time to spend two months of vacation in the Old Continent. On March 10, Fulgencio Batista's coup d'état takes place in Cuba, and Cundo extends his vacation to nine months, during which he travels through Spain, France, Belgium, Holland, and Italy.

Along with a group of artists, he refuses to participate in the II Hispano-American Biennial, organized by the Spanish government of Francisco Franco and financed by Batista's. Subsequently, he conspires against Batista alongside prominent figures such as Sergio González (El Curita).

Four years later, in 1956, he exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial and won first prize in the "International Exhibition of Caribbean Art" at the Museum of Art in Houston, Texas. Also in 1956, the Lyceum presents "A Journey Through the Painting of Cundo Bermúdez."

In 1958, Bermúdez was outside Cuba in order to exhibit his works; he returned the following year after the revolutionary triumph, but his thinking and attitudes led him to isolate himself from the political environment and concentrate on his artistic work, preparing exhibitions in Lima and Santiago de Chile.

With Fidel Castro coming to power in 1959, Cundo participates in efforts to free political prisoners. He exhibits in Chile and Peru. In Chile he met with Carreño, who lived in that South American country, and with the poet Pablo Neruda, whom he had known before. Amid difficulties, he returns to the island.

He requests to leave the country in 1962, being approved five years later. At the end of the 1960s he manages to leave Cuba heading to the United States. He then resides in Washington and later in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in search of the tropical sun.

He has had international recognition; two works of his are part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In 1956 he obtained the Prize of the International Exhibition of the Caribbean, sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts of Houston, Texas.

In 1973 he was awarded at the Tribute to Picasso exhibition, held in Washington.

In 1983 his ceramic mural at the OAS in Washington D.C. is inaugurated. He does not rest; he exhibits in the United States, Caracas, and Rio de Janeiro.

In 1994 the Sotheby's auction house honors him with a tribute for his 80 years of age. In 1996 he settles in Miami.

In the year 2000, the Cuban American Endowment for the Arts publishes "Cundo Bermúdez," a formidable full-color book edited by Vicente Báez, who had the collaboration of writers, artists, and benefactors. It is a limited edition of 25,000 copies about the life and work of Bermúdez. It has 326 pages and was made at an approximate cost of 250 thousand dollars.

He participated in the Venice Biennial and the São Paulo Biennial.

He died in the city of Miami at the age of 94.