New exhibition in Cuba travels through the work of Servando Cabrera

June 10, 2023

The exhibition owes its name to a piece by Cabrera (Havana, 1923-1981) that in 1975 served as a reflection of his concerns about the future, and is organized by the Fondo de Arte Joven and NG Art Gallery.

It is a tribute to the centennial of the renowned artist and includes in its conception sculpture, painting, installation, photography, and video.

It brings together the creative work of 13 artists, among them Niels Reyes, Jorge Otero, William Acosta, Lancelot Acosta, Daniel Collazo, Yohy Suárez, Daniel Arévalo, and Gabriel Cisneros.

According to press reports, this exhibition contributes to bringing Cabrera's legacy into the present through the hands of young exponents of the plastic arts.

Among the works, eroticism stands out as one of the main styles employed during his era by the master, author of pieces such as El silencio, Muerte y vida, La Antorcha, Como cruje la vida, and Como un veinticinco de mayo, among many others on this theme.

As part of the centennial, the exhibition Desde mi isla will also be displayed and the documentary La obra azul will be screened, with unpublished interviews about this artist, at the Havana Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.

Cabrera participated in collective exhibitions alongside notable exponents such as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Antonio Saura.

He obtained broad international recognition, including his participation in the I Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte in Madrid and the XXVI Bienal de Venecia.

Opening remarks of the exhibition for the centennial of Servando Cabrera Moreno at the MNBA

Good afternoon,

This exhibition for the centennial of the birth of Servando Cabrera Moreno is the greatest tribute that the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA) can make on its own celebration, the 110th anniversary of its founding. We know that the museum has organized multiple activities in that regard, but this exhibition is the most important thing it can do in its favor. The relationship between this institution and the artist had very unfavorable moments in the past that are finally being redressed this afternoon.

Cabrera Moreno was an artist who constantly shifted themes and styles. Cabrera was a creator imbued with constant experimentation and innovation, never remaining for long in the same place, subject matter, or style. His work moved forward, in rapid permutations, from the academic to the avant-garde, from expressionism to the American masters of portraiture, from the influence of early Picasso to a personal way of approaching the theme of the body, from the geometric to abstraction, from the influences of Goya and Italian neorealist painting to expressionism, from baroque colorism to the treatment of Havana's architecture and Caribbean luminosity in a sort of very singular geometric abstraction, and finally, from grotesque figuration to the strong anthropological charge that his work experienced in the early years of the Revolution and which was one of his distinctive signs thereafter.

Servando traveled around the world enough to fill his eyes with the masters of art history (Boticelli, Goya, El Greco, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, De Kooning, Bacon, Tamayo, Saura, among his favorites), the artistic currents of past eras, the events of art in real time, while also exhibiting in European galleries, all of which converged in the construction of a personal culture that greatly contributed to the growth of his work. A lover of cinema (Federico Fellini in particular), fine literature, and theater, Servando revealed himself as an animator of the Cuban cultural scene before and after the triumph of January 1st, 1959. For many, he was an authentic Renaissance man. That unlimited curiosity about universal culture moved him to assemble a collection of pieces of popular art acquired on his numerous travels, which was one of his great passions and resulted in a considerable collection in which you can see Mexican and Spanish tableware and ceramics, Peruvian retablos, and Portuguese vessels, among other valuable pieces. He turned his house into a museum with all these acquisitions.

The Revolution inspired him to create extraordinary paintings of militiamen and macheteros and other themes resulting from the upheaval that the social changes and contagious popular effervescence produced in him. In that sense, he can be considered a master of revolutionary epic, perhaps superior to the other artists who produced works under this influence.

Among his greatest satisfactions was teaching, and he was greatly beloved by his students. Flavio Garciandía, an artist-educator if ever there was one, expressed it this way: "Servando was a super teacher through his work as an artist, through his rigor and dedication to Painting with a capital P." Roberto Fabelo recently told me that, although he was not his student, he also joined the silent troop of students who would visit him clandestinely and that he was a generous man in imparting his knowledge to the young.

In 1965, when he was suspended and could no longer teach for being homosexual, his students were the first to suffer. That was an unjust decision that made him suffer in solitude. Servando had, from that moment on, a difficult life due to the homophobia that prevailed in the country during the turbulent sixties. His condition as a homosexual, assumed with frankness, and his determination to defend his sexual freedom with dignity, provoked, first, his dismissal as a teacher and later a prolonged ostracism as a creator.

In 1971, at this very institution, one of his exhibitions was censored, which constituted a despicable and abusive act. Twelve years later, after Servando's death, the museum held a reparative exhibition, continued in 2008 with another. However, Cabrera Moreno died without being able to see those vindications. He died with mockery still alive and latent.

Servando did not stop creating art despite these obstacles. From the seventies onward, already displaced from official circuits for the reasons mentioned, eroticism became his most enduring thematic focus, where he created truly impressive paintings with amorous bodies eager for pleasure, faceless bodies, which configured a very particular aesthetic. The dynamism of the lines and the treatment of color ranges reached levels of pictorial mastery, as well as the uninhibitedness and freshness with which he presented sexual scenes and erogenous zones, leaving for posterity pieces that have not lost their relevance and never will, given the increasing centrality of sexuality in postmodern or contemporary art, even more so in the present with the hegemony of queer theories and the great plurality achieved by debates on the question of genders.

He understood better than many in those years the nature of eroticism, which he recreated through visceral and frontal visuality, he was not afraid to expose the image of sexual combat, nor the organs that produce pleasure. His erotic paintings from the last fifteen years of creation have dominated the interpretation of his work in numerous essays and articles, among which stands out an essential text by critic Gerardo Mosquera and a recent lecture by Roberto Cobas. Other astute art critics and intellectuals have also written excellent pages about Servando's work. I believe, however, that the interpretation of this work has barely begun its journey.

He was a virtuoso of line and corporeal forms, a master for future artists who were influenced by his mastery. I believe that no other visual artist exercised greater influence on the works of his successors than Servando.

The exhibition you will see in a few minutes is very well thought out and conceived to make known synthetically the extensive work of our author. First, in the anteroom, you will see data, smaller format paintings, photographs, texts, and other valuable information. Once in the main hall, the large format erotic and homoerotic paintings stand out, in which sexual violence is filtered through Servando's lyricism, one of his great pictorial mysteries. Credit must be given to the curatorship of Rosemary Rodríguez Cruz and Teresa Toranzo Castillo, as both knew how to display, with great synthesizing power, a vast and rich body of work. They have intelligently embodied their passion for Servando's work and that is to be appreciated. The catalog that accompanies the exhibition is of excellence and possesses, in addition to the works, texts by the organizers and substantial works by the curators. They harmoniously complement the exhibition.

It is important to recognize this afternoon the active participation of the Museo Biblioteca Servando Cabrera Moreno, an institution that took upon itself the entire commemorative process of the centennial, as well as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, host of the exhibition, and the Fundación Los Carbonell, based in Panama, which houses the most important private collection of pieces by the artist.

This is indeed a relevant exhibition that continues the tribute to the great man displaced and repudiated by the intolerance and homophobia that prevailed in the sixties and seventies. Previously, in Panama, the NG Art Gallery gallery inaugurated in May the exhibition Desde mi isla, curated by its technical team. Other exhibitions are being organized in different places. Tomorrow a documentary will premiere and a book will be presented, both about Servando. On the other hand, the Oficina del Historiador de La Habana and the Biblioteca Nacional José Martí are also announcing new exhibitions in the coming months, which suggests a year of sustained and permanent consecration of one of the greats of Cuban art. Of the truly great, it is important to emphasize. Servando seems to have made his own that idea by José Lezama Lima that "Only in art is nothing impossible." For him, artistic creation was the greatest freedom capable of being achieved by man in society.

Thank you very much.