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• 03 / 13 / 2009

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To bring together in the same exhibition hall three “monsters” of Cuban fine arts – Wifredo Lam, Raúl Martínez and José Bedia – is a long-cherished project of curator Corina Matamoros, who has been joined by Liana Rio and Roberto Cobas as experts. The Tenth Havana Biennial has offered her the opportunity to do it. During the event, the National Museum of Fine Arts will host an exposition with significant works of the three authors.

“The way in which that dialogue will take place, the way in which such unique poetics will interact is still a mystery. We do not know for sure. But we trust that the result will be interesting, each one of them has much to say”, states Corina.

The idea of bringing them together is not a caprice, but the result of a detailed research work. Corina Matamoros remarks that, beyond their peculiarities, the three artists have something in common, Each one of them started from a poetics, from an established artistic movement, and with his work went as far as renewing ir or even transcending it. And they achieved it in a “peripheral” context, relatively far from the leading centers of those aesthetic trends.

Lam did it with surrealism to the point where many, including Corina Matamoros, do not regard him as a surreal because he transcends many of its parameters; Raul Martinez, with that unique ownership of Pop, full of new meanings; and Bedia continues to do so with a work that, while still linked to conceptualism, is granted a somewhat different sense.

The list of selected works is still not definitive. Something, however, is clear: they will all be pieces from periods in which the artists reached their definition. The majority belong to the National Museum of Fine Arts, to other cultural institutions or to private collectors in Cuba and abroad.

A catalogue will be prepared for the occasion that pretends to become, more than a mere and circumstancial reference, a group reflection on the three artists (texts have been commissioned to prestigious specialists) in a publication aimed at exceeding the space of the exhibition.

Corina Matamoros is convinced that the project will offer new perspectives, will cast light upon the study of the work of these paradigms. They are not unknown artists, much has been said and written about them (although there are still unexplored aspects) but the work is so great that there will always remain something to be said. There lies the challenge.


(Boletín Décima Bienal de La Habana)