# Famous Cuban sculptor José Villa Soberón celebrated his 70th birthday

**Date:** 09/03/2020

One of the main figures in Cuban plastic arts, sculptor José Villa Soberón, who this Wednesday turned 70 years old, continues working on multiple projects.

Throughout his native country, the figurative sculptures of the winner of the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 2008 attract the attention of natives and tourists. The artist managed to seat John Lennon in a park in Havana and lay Ernest Hemingway back down at the bar of his favorite bar-restaurant El Floridita.

Another of his most striking pieces is the bronze statue of the legendary dancer Alicia Alonso placed in the Gran Teatro de La Habana, an institution that since 2016 has also borne the name of that prima ballerina assoluta distinguished with Cuba's highest honors.

Likewise, in the garden of the Liceo Artístico y literario of the capital, within the Palacio del Marqués de Arcos, you can find a sculpture of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, on the day he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm.

I work with both languages of sculpture: the figurative and the abstract, with the latter I identify more personally, but its reading requires a somewhat more specialized or prepared viewer, while the former carries a responsibility to a broader public, he commented during an interview.

The small-format works of this sculptor are part of collections in Cuba, the United States, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Egypt, Russia, France, Costa Rica, Italy, Argentina, and Mexico.

Among his major monumental sculptures are Homage to Wilfredo Lam, on the campus of the University of Valencia; the one dedicated to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, in the garden of the Convent of San Francisco de Asís in Havana; and the Caballero de París, on the outskirts of that same place.

Furthermore, Villa Soberón is famous for his monument to Benny Moré, the so-called "Barbarian of Rhythm," on the Paseo del Prado in Cienfuegos.