Kcho among artists in audience with Pope Francis

June 27, 2023

Cuban painter, sculptor and engraver Alexis Leiva Machado (Kcho) was among more than 200 artists from around the world who met with Pope Francis last Friday, in the midst of celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Modern Art Collection of the Vatican Museums.

Kcho told Prensa Latina that the message of the Supreme Pontiff was powerful, illuminating and very necessary, and highlighted the relevance he gave to the role of artists, intellectuals, poets, and their possible positive influence in the face of the many problems of wars, hunger and lack of humanity that affect the world.

The Pontiff emphasized the positive influence of artists in the face of the many problems of wars, hunger and lack of humanity that affect the world.

Kcho inaugurated in May 2014 his personal exhibition Via Crucis in the Renaissance Hall of the Palazzo della Cancellería of the Holy See, a display made up of 29 paintings, drawings and unpublished sculptures.

Pope Francis treasures a work of his, Monumento final, gifted by then-president Raúl Castro when he passed through the Vatican in 2015 upon his return from a tour of Algeria and Russia. The pope later ceded the painting to the Apostolic Nunciature of Havana.

That same year, Raúl gave the Holy Father during his visit to Havana the work Milagro, an enormous Christ on the cross in oars, also by Kcho, who participated in the presentation ceremony.

"We need the principle of harmony to inhabit more in our world, and to expel uniformity," Francis said to the painters, sculptors, architects, writers, musicians, directors and actors from more than 30 countries, who were present early on in the Sistine Chapel.
Harmony of Differences

The pope, still recovering from his surgery earlier in the month, called on artists to help make room for the spirit, whose work, he stated, "is to create the harmony of differences, not to destroy them, not to standardize them, but to harmonize them" because "then we understand what beauty is."

"We are in an era of media ideological colonization and of lacerating conflicts; a homogenizing globalization coexists with many closed localisms. This is the danger of our time," warned the Holy Father in his remarks, published by the press office of the Holy See.

"In that of being seers, sentinels, critical consciences, I feel you as allies for so many things that are close to my heart, such as the defense of human life, social justice for the last, the care of our common home, feeling ourselves all brothers," Francis added.

Among those attending the meeting, promoted by the Vatican's Dicastery for Culture and Education, were also British film director Ken Loach; Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco; German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer; French architect Jean Nouvel; Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso and writer Roberto Saviano.

Kcho (Isle of Youth, February 12, 1971) received the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts in 1995.

His work has managed to establish itself in the most demanding circuits of international contemporary art and has also received important awards, such as the Atelier Calder Residency, Saché, France, 1999; the Grand Prize of the Kwangju Biennial, Korea, 1995 and the Ludwig Foundation Fellowship, Forum Ludwig, Germany, 1994; among others.

He is considered the Cuban artist who has most succeeded in positioning himself on a world level, after painter Wifredo Lam.