Cosmovisiones de un cubano universal

Cosme Proenza Almaguer (Baguanos, Holguin, 1948) — painter, draftsman, illustrator and muralist— has created an interesting and sui generis pictorial worldview that makes him different from the contemporary artistic field even beyond our borders. Graduated at the National School of Art in Havana, and the Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev, Ukraine, Cosme has created —in series like Manipulaciones, Boscomanias, Los dioses escuchan, Mujer con sombrero, and Variaciones sobre temas de Matisse, recognizable individual mythologies where symbols and myths, by means of different signs and intertextualities, go well with the human being in an artistic heap of troubles while studying the codes of the European art. His work is fundamentally based on analysis: “I am a researcher who works with the codes of the European art,” he has stated.

It is just that —the analytical emphasis, the appropriation—, which makes him one of the pioneers of Cuban postmodernism, especially when other trends prevailed in the island. “No one has embraced tradition like him. No one with stronger, waving hands has created Bosco like him…he has the power of a demiurge, the key to the enchanted castle. His drawings are firm and delicate. The way he treats colors gives his postmodernism a lyrical dimension by strengthening it, giving rise to epiphany. His hedonism uses every source: the erotic, ludic, mythical…few Cuban art works show such an unusual virtuosity,” pointed out writer and ethnologist Miguel Barnet.

“My life has been the interaction, not the reflection, and it shapes my ideals and behavior. When I work with the Western code, I do it with a code that is not foreign to us as we speak the language of a centuries-old culture, with Arab traits and so forth, with the richness of aboriginal, African terms…we are a feast of mixture. I am the result of that. I reflect something that has to do with the Cuban tradition, but not the Cuban roots based on signs. Cuba is much more than that. The art is great because of its ability to expand. Beauty is adherent to us. You have no chance to escape from it,” added the author of “Cecilia Valdés”, “Lennon y la noche”, “Jardín”, “La expulsión del paraíso,” and “San Cristobal de La Habana.”

His work, present in exhibitions such as Voces del Silencio and Paralelos. Cosme Proenza: Historia Y Tradición del Arte Universal, is part of the collective imagination of the Cuban people, with dissimilar universal repercussions. All of these confirm he is one of the Hispanic artists with an avant-garde worldview in recent times.