Manuel Mendive Takes Over Bellas Artes

May 23, 2024

It is almost literal: Manuel Mendive (Havana, 1944) has taken over the Cuban Art building of the National Museum of Fine Arts. His mega-exhibition Pan con guayaba, una vida feliz, inaugurated last Friday, occupies several spaces in the Havana institution. His unmistakable figurations—paintings, sculptures, installations—surprise visitors in the courtyard, in the hallways, or even in the exhibition rooms of the permanent collection, in intentional dialogue with the work of other great artists, such as Wifredo Lam or Amelia Pélaez.

This is an ambitious curatorship that articulates a discourse of deep poetic significance. In the gallery for temporary exhibitions on the third level, the main nucleus is displayed. It is a journey to the origins, which could be understood as the process of consolidation of one of the most significant poetics of national visual art.

Prodigious creatures: birds, deities, women and children; lush vegetation that seems to dance, and hundreds of shells and snails that allude to myths, legends; a religious heritage that builds bridges to Mother Africa and found lyrical realization in these lands: this is the art of Manuel Mendive, full and suggestive.

The title can offer many clues. It evokes the years when young Mendive was treasuring the experiences, the images that he would later return in marvelous creations. That boy—he recounts it in the text he wrote for the exhibition flyer—loved pan con guayaba. Today's Mendive always bets on happiness. Even if it is not the one others expect: personal fulfillment is one of the pillars of his vision of the world.

The exhibition will be open until the month of July. It has been conceived in memory of Juan Delgado Calzadilla, Juanito, who passed away some years ago, a promoter of dozens of Cuban artists. It is an undertaking of the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Mendive Art Project and Génesis Galerías de Arte, with curation by Darys Vázquez and Laura Arañó.