• Submitted by: manso
• Arts and Culture
• 12 / 19 / 2010

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2010.12.18 - 12:05:45 / [email protected], Cuba.- For the first time in the western hemisphere, a cultural center –Cuba’s Fine Arts Museum- exhibits the complete collection of 74 sculptures by Edgar Degas, facilitated by the M. T. Abraham Center for the Visual Arts, of the United States.

The inauguration was attended by Alicia Alonso, general director of Cuba’s National Ballet Company, to whom the exhibition is dedicated, on the occasion of her 90th birthday this December 21.

As a tribute, a group of girls studying at the National Ballet School performed for the prima ballerina assoluta, after which they placed a satin ribbon on the ponytail of the mythical 14-year old Small Ballerina, the only sculpture its creator exhibited when he was alive and was the cause of a heated controversy in Paris at the end of the 19th century.

Alex Rosemberg, a US valuer of works of art, asserted on Friday –while inaugurating the exhibition- that this is a unique opportunity to enjoy such marvelous sculptures by the great French artist.

The author couldn’t see most of them while he was still alive, because he only cast the one known as the Small Ballerina and the rest were cast after his death in 1917.

The organizer of this exhibition, Rosemberg –who has facilitated the presence in Cuba of another three exceptional art exhibitions – stated that the one on Degas is the most important of all, and that it has previously been presented only in Greece, Israel and Bulgaria.

He also said that the collection will travel from Havana to Valencia and that its presence in other important cities is already being arranged.

In a previous meeting with the press, he spoke about the vicissitudes of these pieces, their going through several owners and foundries, to the point of not being able to determine their authenticity, although everybody accepts they belong to Degas and one of them reached the price of 19 million dollars not long ago.

The pieces, of small format –except the Small Ballerina- have female nudes, horses and the recurrent ballet dancers and themes, and excel for the grace of their suggested movements and, as a good impressionist, for the contrast of light and shade used by the artist.

Source: ACN