Sanchez artwork featured at Havana’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

By KONK Life News Staff

For the first time in over five decades, cultural institutions in Cuba and the United States are collaborating for an artistic exchange.  The groundbreaking project, One Race, the Human Race, began last Friday when Havana’s Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBA) opened an exhibition of intaglios by renowned Key West artist Mario Sanchez.  Then, in February, multiple Key West venues will host exhibitions and residencies by contemporary Cuban artists.

 

One Race, the Human Race marks the first time in 52 years that an exhibition of work by an American artist is being shown at a museum in Cuba.  The project comes on the heels of the Obama administration relaxing restrictions on travel to Cuba by reinstating cultural exchange licenses in 2011.  In December 2013 the first commercial passenger flight from Key West to Cuba in over 50 years landed in Havana.

 

A second-generation American whose grandparents fled Cuba during the Ten Years’ War in the 1860s, Sanchez (1908-2005) mastered the technique of carving lively and sometimes gently satirical scenes of life in Key West. The Havana museum will showcase 30 of his intaglios.

 

Sanchez was born just six years after Cuba gained its independence from Spain, and equality of all races and religions is a recurring theme in his work.

 

By the time Sanchez captured the spirit of this bustling community, Key West — whose city motto is “One Human Family” — was home to whites, blacks, Hispanics, Creoles, and men and woman of all religions.

 

It is in this spirit that Key West will also play host to a series of residencies and exhibitions during February.  Participants will include some of Cuba’s most treasured artists, including Manuel Mendive, Roberto Fabelo, Rocio Garcia, The Merger, Stainless, Reynerio Tamayo, and Sandra Ramos y Rubén Alpízar.  Venues for shows by these and other artists include the National Gallery Bellas Artes in Havana and Key West, the Hemingway House Museum, the Studios Key West, the Old Island Restoration Foundation, the Mel Fisher Museum, and the Gato Cigar Factory.

 

The Mario Sanchez exhibition at the MNBA is curated by Nance Frank, an expert on the artist’s work, and Hortensia Montero, curator of contemporary collections at the museum.

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]