A SELECTION OF CUBAN CONTEMPORARY ART
CUBA
CUBA
61
Franklin Álvarez Fortún
Proyección mental
- Estimate
- $3,000 - 5,000
$5,625
Lot Details
oil on canvas
2002
43 x 56 3/4 in. (109.2 x 144.1 cm.)
Signed and dated "Franklin 2002" lower right. Further titled and dated "2002 Proyección Mental" on the reverse.
Specialist
Full-Cataloguing
Catalogue Essay
Mental Projection establishes an irreverent dialogue between Cuban history and the culture of everyday life, building bridges between personages long sanctified by historic discourse and the economic and social realities of contemporary life in Cuba. That bronzed figure who proudly poses and flexes his physique à la Charles Atlas is José Martí (1853-1895), a figure venerated by Cubans—from all eras and across the political spectrum—as the paramount writer and intellectual of the 19th century, as well as the instigator of the island’s independence from Spain and the United States, a modernist poet, and an incisive reporter... The presence of the pig is a direct reminder of Cuba’s Special Period [in the early 1990s], when the shortage of food and fuel—a consequence of the end of Soviet subsidies—forced people to raise chickens on their balconies and pigs in their bathtubs and backyards, a phenomenon that was documented by flabbergasted National Geographic photographers.
Abelardo Mena Chicuri, Curator, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana
Abelardo Mena Chicuri, Curator, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana
Provenance