Gallery U owner, Joe Clare, has many paintings from Cuba in his collection. He has selected a small group of his favourites for exhibition in the window gallery. Clare has met and come to know these artists, visiting their studios and connecting with them over the years during his various visits to Cuba.
Manuel Moinelo
In Matanzas, one of the most important centers for Afro-Cuban religion, Manuel Moinelo has his studio. Born in 1941 his paintings depict elements of Afro-Cuban religious figures. His studio home is beside the Matanzas cemetery, and is filled with his colorful paintings. Outside the house, his meaningful sculptures evoke the Afro-Cuban religion, and have been used in ceremonies. In his long career, Antonio Manuel Pineiro Moinelo, began in graphic design with recognized work on posters, signs and lighting, including festival coverage and ideological, cultural, sport and social topics, as well as stage design. He has been a member of the National National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) since 1970. His later work is all dedicated as sacred Afro-Cuban art.
His works are part of permanent collections an important museums such as: Museo de Extremadura, Spain, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Provincial Museum Palacio de Junco, Matanzas, Art Museum, Matanzas. Artists from different countries like Spain, France, England and Mexico, cherish his paintings in private collections. Similarly he has cultivated the attention of various artists and researchers, who have written about his work.
Joel Jover Llenderrosos
Born in Port Tarafa, Camagüey, in 1953, Jover is a member of the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC). He received the Diploma of Merit from the Highter Institute of Art in September 2001, in Havana and in November 2003, he received the Alejo Carpentier prize, among other distinguished recognitions and awards. He has been a consultant and lecturer at the Higher Institute of Art, in Havana since 2007. He has exhibited in Havana, and other areas of Cuba, as well as in North and South America and Europe. His work has been collected by art lovers from all over the world, and his studio in San Juan de Dios square in Camagüey is well known.
Art Critic and Curator, Pavel Alejandro Barrios Sosa has said: “Jover’s work is a continuous experiment of search, encounter and reunion. Constantly seeking, and finding elements and forms, he redefines these within the context of his most persistent personal symbols, revealing shifting relationships of power and form. His personal symbols transform again through the filter of reutilization.”
Joel González Pallerols
Born in 1983 in Camagüey, painter Joel Pallerols has produced many extraordinary works in his rising career, and his work has been exhibited many times throughout the past decade in both solo and group shows. The esteemed Cuban Art Critic and Curator, Pavel Alejandro Barrios Sosa has said:
“The pictorial work of Joel Gonzales Pallerols results to be a sort of bridging relating the discursive strategies of the movements of the 80’s and the so called “New Wave” of the 90’s. In this sense and as a representation of the codes of the first cited movement, we can perceive the deconstruction of the political-social iconography previously at work parallel to a language that seems to not give that much weight to the details of an “exquisitely polished” style and chooses a kind of un-drawing emphasizing an unembarrassed application of colour. This de-construction implies not only the formal, conceptual and contextual revision of the conventional iconography, it also allows for the addendum and development of new Icons representative of several moments of Cuban contemporary history. Another operation in place, that could be missed due to its subtlety but that possesses paradoxically a rather spinal function in the personalization of Pallerol’s work and his change of “Language” is the presentation of a completely “new visuality”. This phenomenon in place acting on his behalf brings new content to the work, underlining the freshness of his proposal. It is precisely in the will of personalizing and changing the language altogether that we can perceive the landmarks of the tendencies of his time carrying the momentum of the 90’s movement. The extra dimension brought by his intelligent use of the satiric element, in the context of social commentary, the aesthetic intention behind the plasticity of the chromatic resources, the articulation of colour, form and texture, as symbolism and a new language in the realization of a seemingly simple work indicate that intelligent game and change of attitude that started with the “New Wave”.
The result of this whole process of re-coding is to say the least, a renewal of the relationship between the observant public and the long accepted social-political iconography. Addressing questions of a more conventional nature and form already established through this “new” approach, Pallerols is reorganizing the positions and precepts of the observer in relation to matters formerly considered to be almost “sacred” along the history of the Cuban political context.
According to its own Philosophical terms, art is an elevated form of social consciousness.The work of Joel Gonzales Pallerols makes out of this concept an axis around which and dressed in a proper irony revolves an amusing sarcasm in a playful spin that takes us as all good art should, to infinity.”
LINK HERE to view Works by Cuban Artists