Plastic Artist Juan Moreira Passes Away

October 18, 2022

The renowned plastic artist Juan Moreira lost the colors of life and began his journey toward Cuban historical memory, passing away today in Havana at the age of 83.

Like a lightning bolt that strikes without warning, the news of his death arrived, reported the Ministry of Culture, while echoing the words of praise disseminated by painter and critic Manuel López Oliva.

Death does not spare the root makers either, it has just taken one of the Cuban artists who knew how to fulfill —with poetry and generational roots— the human and expressive mission that life assigned to him, López Oliva affirmed.

Similarly, the creator highlighted Moreira's fidelity "to the Nation, his noble spirit, his values as a draftsman and painter, the paternal and family substance exercised, and the weight of a diverse imaginary."

In that sense, his prolific work stands out, which "went from his somewhat naturalistic sketches of the visions elaborated on the Isle of Youth, to a poetic that united his work on advertising billboards with a very professional one," López Oliva stressed.

From his trajectory stand out his work as illustrator of editions of the text Don Quixote of La Mancha, his participation in the murals of the Hotel Habana Libre and the building where the Prensa Latina agency was founded, the portraits of heroes and friends, as well as his erotic art.

A drawing professor at the San Alejandro Professional School of Plastic Arts, Moreira registered some twenty personal exhibitions and dozens of collective exhibitions throughout his career, while his pieces remain in prestigious collections in Cuba and the world.

He conceived ornamental and symbolic compositions for fountains and urban spaces, "and likewise made his house —together with his wife, painter Alicia Leal— a pleasant space for communication," López Oliva noted.

Recipient of the Distinction for National Culture, it is time to bid him farewell, not without first thanking him for his legacy, that which enhanced Cuban culture from the visual arts and was left imprinted in his students.

(With information from Prensa Latina)

Words from artist and art critic Manuel López Oliva

Death does not spare the root makers either. Death has just taken away to the "kingdom of Cuban artistic memory" one of the Cuban artists who knew how to fulfill —with poetry and generational roots— the human and expressive mission that life assigned to him.

Juan Moreira has passed away. Sadness envelops all of us who were his friends and knew of his fidelity to the Nation, his noble spirit, his values as a draftsman and painter, the paternal and family substance exercised, and the weight of a diverse imaginary that went from his somewhat naturalistic sketches of the visions elaborated on the Isle of Youth, to a poetic that united his work on advertising billboards with a very professional assimilation of the visual signs of Customs Officer Rousseau through the New Figuration unleashed from the 60s.

He also produced a very personal linear version that illustrated our editions of Don Quixote of La Mancha, worked as Venturelli's assistant on the murals of the Hotel Habana Libre and the building where Prensa Latina was founded, created romantic portraits of heroes and friends accompanied by animals...and advanced toward a branch of erotic art synthetic in design and purist in the careful chromatic planes of hard contours.

Moreira was a demanding drawing professor at the "San Alejandro" Professional School of Plastic Arts, conceived ornamental and symbolic compositions for fountains and spaces of urban public existence, and likewise made his house —together with his wife, painter Alicia Leal— a pleasant space for the communication of many creole and external people from art and other cultural spheres. The time for the fair and necessary retrospective exhibition will come, to bring to light everything he did and must be known by new generations, to gather his contributions in a book laden with history and feelings.

Now it falls to us to bid him farewell with the gratitude of all the visual arts entities, of those who were his students, of the friends he always kept in mind, of those people of the homeland who admired his creations with pleasure and occasionally used them as a representative component of publications and spaces. His old workshop on Mercaderes 2 in Old Havana and his Vedado house on 8th Street will forever keep the memory of his mark... which indirectly remains in his daughters and wife. Let us remember him with his well-deserved merits.