They commemorate Feijóo's birth on Book Day in Cuba

April 2, 2021

The 107th anniversary of the birth of writer, painter, and folklorist Samuel Feijóo was commemorated today in this city in the center of the country, on a date coinciding with Cuban Book Day.

Feijóo was born on March 31, 1914 in the town of San Juan de los Yeras, in what is now the central Cuban province of Villa Clara, and is considered one of the most prominent figures in narratives of Cuba's rural landscapes through regional chronicle, poetry, and painting.

He died in Havana in 1992. The acclaimed folklorist founded the publication Isla in 1958 at the Central University Marta Abreu de Las Villas, and later, in 1969, the journal Signos, which continues to the present day next to Leoncio Vidal Park in this city.

As part of the tribute to the artist, issues 77 and 78 of Signos were presented, as well as a new edition of the book Cuentos Populares Cubanos, authored by Feijóo, enhanced with over 500 pages of rural humor.

Painter and sculptor Ramón Rodríguez, friend and continuator of Feijóo's work, was presented today with the National Living Memory Prize 2020 in the Personalities category.

"In my mind I keep the phrase that the master told me one day: 'One must work like the root, in the shadow, in silence and in depth, and then see how outside the tree is born and flourishes,'" Rodríguez asserted.

Samuel Feijóo's work is highlighted by his novel Juan Quinquín en Pueblo Mocho (1964), adapted to film in 1967, and the collection of stories Cuentacuentos, which won him the Luis Felipe Rodríguez Story Prize from the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba in 1975.