The Cuban Arts Group

René Francisco Rodríguez
b. Holguín, Cuba, 1960; resides in Madrid, Spain
El coleccionista (The Collector)
1999
Mixed media (Toothpaste tubes, metal, plastic, glass)
7 7/8 x 12 3/16 x 3 1/8 in. (20 x 31 x 8 cm)

René Francisco graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana. His creative collaborations with Eduardo Ponjuán, the creation of the program Desde una Pragmática Pedagógica (DUPP) (From a Pedagogical Pragmatic), and his solo work in painting, sculpture, installation, video, performance, and process art, define him as an influential Cuban artist. 
 
René Francisco’s work is predominantly conceptual and addresses the dichotomy between art and life. His primary focus is on the obfuscation of s*x and eroticism with the power, consumption, and prostitution of cultural values ​​at play between art and its market.

El coleccionista (The Collector) belongs to René Francisco’s “tubosutras” (a blending of the words “tube” and “Kamasutra”) involving headless figurines made from crumbled tubes of paint, toothpaste, etc. El coleccionista represents a narcissistic art collector posing imperiously inside a cabinet ‘gallery’. The accompanying exhibit of dull ph***ic objects suggests a fossilized, brashly decadent image of the art world.

✍️Gabriela Azcuy and David Horta
📚Published in “Under the Spell of the Palm Tree: The Rice Collection of Cuban Art” (p.p. 230-231). Madrid, Spain: TCAG, 2025

Rafael Soriano
b. Matanzas, Cuba, 1920 – d. Miami, Florida, United States, 2015)
Personaje cósmico (Cosmic Character)
1991
Oil on canvas
50 x 60 in. (127 x 152 cm)

Rafael Soriano graduated from Havana’s Academia San Alejandro and later became a professor there. A precursor of abstract art in Cuba, he joined the movement of 10 Pintores Concretos (10 Concrete Painters). After immigrating to the United States in 1962, his work evolved towards abstract imagery with mystical themes.

Personaje cósmico (Cosmic Character) seems to be a self-portrait. However, the elements of Soriano’s characteristic imagery are at play here: interwoven biomorphic articulations, insinuations of unknown powers at work, subdued and vaguely luminescent colors rendering the sensual contours of bodies in sfumato (softened outlines or hazy forms), a background of vaporous atmospheres. Soriano thus delineates a spiritual, cosmic dimension, embedded in mystery, in which the borders between the corporeal and the spirit blur, and permutations occur between the subconscious and wakefulness.

✍️Gabriela Azcuy and David Horta
📚Published in “Under the Spell of the Palm Tree: The Rice Collection of Cuban Art” (p.p. 237). Madrid, Spain: TCAG, 2025

Collection