Noel Guzmán, naif painter and poet, dies from COVID

August 11, 2021

The naive painter and Cuban poet Noel Guzmán passed away on August 3rd in Santa Clara due to the aftereffects of Covid-19.

Born in the city of San Juan de los Remedios, 45 kilometers from the provincial capital of Villa Clara, Guzmán would have turned 67 years old on Wednesday, August 4th. Noel developed self-taught training from his beginnings as a painter and draftsman, alongside the Grupo Signos directed by folklorist Samuel Feijóo, in Santa Clara.

The final stage of his career he enjoyed in the municipality of Santo Domingo, also in this central province, and he defined himself as 'an old painter, Cuban poet, writer, wanderer, humorist and an enormous dreamer'.

His works are part of the collections of Casa de las Américas, the Centro Wifredo Lam and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, in La Habana, Cuba.

Starting in 1989 he began presenting solo exhibitions in different places throughout the nation such as Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, Homenaje a Regino Boti, Galería Orígenes, Gran Teatro de La Habana Alicia Alonso and Vuelo de colibrí, Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others.

With recognized international prestige, he is valued by painting specialists as an exponent of a 'natural and unsettling expressionism' for the way he recreated reality and created fables from his immediate surroundings.