The sample “Confluences” has projected like a modest recognition and tribute to the history of Cuban the pop art not only, but also to that carried out by other teachers of the international art.
The initial idea to make a exhibition project that offered an historical route by the most significant moments of pop the Cuban, was so attractive and seductive as pretenciosa, considering the limitations of space and time whereupon was counted for the joint of the proposal. We chose then to make come together to three artists who register within this slope, but that assumes from budgets aesthetic-conceptua different them, and simultaneously she was to include a quite ample generational space. Of there the decision to select to a young creator, as it is the case of the cienfueguero Julio Ferrer, next to other more distant authors in the time, like Jose M. Go'mez Fresquet (Frémez), National Prize of Plastic Arts 2005, and the teacher Raul Martinez, it names this last inescapable one whenever reference to the pop one in our country becomes.
Clear that, in spite of the divergences, their works present/display certain meeting points or confluence, mainly with regard to the formal order, which emparenta of some the more canonical pop way with or orthodox one (North American): predominance of flat, intense and uncontaminated colors to each other, with strong resistances of complementary, from which an absence of claroscuro or degradation of values is derived to give volumetría to the figures; marked to influences of comic and the publicity; taste by the great formats; among others.
Of Raul Martinez it has been spoken much, as much that would be sterile any dissertation on the matter. Single I will stop in a point which I consider of vital importance, by the controversial thing. In an occasion I listened somebody to affirm, I paraphrase: “the nexuses of pop Raul with the original one are single from the significant one, because with respect to the conceptual heading or of the meaning, nothing has to do its poetic one with the images of the consumer society reflected by the North American artists”. Opinion of which I differ.
The enthroned heroic iconography as recurrent subject in the work of Raul is, really and in last instance, our world of consumption; a consumption so ideologized that it happens virtual than cósico, tangible. If the American creators (already we know that pop the English was somewhat different) took control of images of the culture of masses, as they are the advertising fences, the commercial announcements, who stuffed the visibility of the citadino North American during the Sixties in which the tendency still arose - and today, Martinez, in perfect temporary synchrony, did something similar with the revolutionary murals of the CDR and other icons of the political propaganda that also they saturated - and they saturate our context.
As far as if in the appropriation of this last one there is irony or cynicism, like in the founders, that we will never know it, conscious that it is not possible absolutely to be trusted the testimonies of the creators, because not always they are at readiness to give the “last word” (we remember if no, what Warhol responded to Andy when they asked to him so that she painted so many tins of soup Campbell). In my particular case, since I began to study the work of Raul I have always watched with suspicion - and in this I agree with an analogous commentary that at some time the Cuban critic made Gerald Mosquera- the fact that, after his transit by the abstraction, like part of the group the Eleven (group that with its chromatic sobriety reacted against the stereotypes in the handling of the national identity which they predominated in a part of the vanguards, entiéndase the cliche of the colorful light and the tropical one, the baroque style in the visibility, etc.), and in the middle of a so hostile context for the abstraction as it was it the decade of the sixty, Raul returned to “the festive” figuration with, a motley and estridente chromatic trowel, right what he was wanted for the new revolutionary art. I resist to read naivete in this gesture.
Of Frémez it excels in the first place its versatility. Designer, caricaturist, essential figure within the Cuban cartelística, are considered one of the initiators of the digital art and serigrafía in our country. Collaborator of the humoristic weekly magazine Zigzag, the periodic Revolution; Director of Design and Photography of the Cuba magazine (1964-67) and of the Experimental Factory of Graph of Havana (1976-80), at the moment is vice-president of the Association of Plastic Artists of the UNEAC. Nevertheless, such responsibilities never have been an obstacle for their professional development and its growth like artist. Its work at the moment is at its moment summit, of greater quality and consistency, every time it is separated every day more of trasfondo partner-political, of the ethical commitment that supposes the panfleto and the vindication, characteristics that, by force of as much reiteration, got to ballast their valuable artistic production at some time.
I feel that in several of his more recent works the artist has been incorporating a touch - very oxigenante- of hedonismo, banalización, frivolity, which makes more impartial, than simultaneously poper. Also, lately their works have won considerably in dimensions, so that the visual impact in the receiver is still greater. But, by on all the things, something that always is outstanding in its proposals is the cleaning in the handling of the technique, together with a great power of synthesis and formal purification.
On the other hand, Julio Ferrer Guerra (Cienfuegos, 1973), graduated as the National School of Art (1988-1992), made studies in The International People's College, of Denmark, in the autumn of 1999. It is member of the Association Saíz Brothers and the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, as well as he has collaborated with publications of graphical humor Palante and Dedeté. Account with a total of nine personal exhibitions and more than fifty collective ones, as much in Cuba as abroad, to the time that has been deserving of numerous prizes and mentions by the quality of its work. Nevertheless, their works, perhaps because of the pernicious “geographic fatalism”, little are known in the capital scope, to the point of which it stops many his last personal exhibition in Gallery 23 and 12 (“I go There…”) constituted all a revelation of a genuine and extraordinary talent novel.
Beyond the impressive technical virtuosity that shows its plastic production, it wanted to stop to me in four characteristics very or defined that distinguish or distinguish the style of Julio Ferrer: an acute and incisive sense of humor, which confers a character of satire or choteo to him to good part of its creations; it is present at of an atmosphere erótica not less mordacious, aggressive and provoking, specially in the cartoons, illustrations and comic strips; operating use of a intertextual one to maneuver with referring previous of the History of the Art, or universal or Cuban (it is seen, in the sample, the piece that takes by title the cotrack); visible meeting points with the work of the American artist Roy Liechtenstein; and insistence in the subject of the trip, the emigration, from a perspective in authentic and original sum.
Be left to this sample like modest recognition and tribute to the history of
Cuban the pop art not only, 1 but also to that carried out by Andy Warhol,
Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselman, Robert Indiana, George then
Segal, among other so many that initiated that process of “cultural banalización”
or putting in solfa of the old limits of Modernity between culture of elite
and culture of masses, between discharge and low culture; essential, constituent
process of this new and uncertain one were of the humanity that it has given
in being called “postmodern”.
1 Insisto on which we have wanted to present/display a single a selection,
not paneo and much less a pop anthology of the Cuban, because of being
thus creators like Juan had not been able to need Moreira, White Eugene, Loyal
Caesar, Rubén Torres Llorca, Jose Miguel Perez, Umberto Peña, to those who
also somehow this exhibition renders tribute.
(Words to the catalogue of the sample “Confluences”, inaugurated in the gallery
of art of the Museum of the Rum, the 18 of January of 2007. The original title
of these is “By a necessary encounter: three watched the pop one…”).
Piter Ortega Núñez
Historian of the Art.