Tributes to the Cuban master of plastic arts Alfredo Sosabravo will never be enough. He, like no one else, has shown us the strength of color in its different states, as well as the happiness brought to the canvas or to the format demanded by his muses.
In that eternal youth of fertile days, he takes us by the hand and returns the smile through numerous exotic characters, because at some point we decide to grow up and become adults (serious) concerned about climbing a step in society.
Just on the day of his 89th birthday, this October 25, the publishing label Collage Ediciones presented at the National Museum of Fine Arts, the catalogue Sosabravo on paper, with 350 pages and more than 200 illustrations.
As its name indicates, the publication contains a part of the artist's production made of paper, say his inks, watercolors, serigraphs, collage and other formats.
The essayist and art critic Rafael Acosta de Arriba was in charge of making known the content of the book, which also contains four texts by the connoisseurs of the work of the National Prize for Plastic Arts (1997), René Palenzuela, Aldo Menéndez, Israel Castellano and Acosta de Arriba himself. Later, according to Acosta de Arriba, other catalogues are planned on the different creative stations of the artist, ceramist and engraver.
When entering the pictorial areas of Sosabravo "childhood is transmuted and becomes the whole life", explains Acosta de Arriba, who highlights the existence of three fundamental requirements in the work of the Illustrious Son of Sagua la Grande, his native town.
It is about his "babélica" condition, followed by the exuberance of his colorful and dreamlike nature, very related to the infantile vision. In the three dimensions the painter captures the essence of the beautiful seen, through a refined work, which you can crumble to the minimum and still remain intact, perfect, without errors.
His technique is clean, flooded with tones, nuances and intentions. Characters who come on stage and tell us their avatars, as if we had known them all our lives and there is no lack of formal presentations. It is one of the successes in art: the powerful empathic charge and its magnetism.
But more than all those elements together, Sosabravo manages to transmute the senses, confuse them, play with them on purpose. In the words of Acosta de Arriba: "touch looks, the look feels and the eyes hear the colors. World of the senses. Things are the same and they are different. The mind does not think ideas but forms".
The mind is satisfied again, to interpret in ecstasy the stories of the canvas, the ceramics or through its demanding productions in glass, as part of a collaboration with the project Ars Murano, in Venice, for approximately 20 years.
In the presentation, her colleague of work and generation, the artist Lesbia Vent Dumois spoke about those years in which both worked in a workshop. From that period she recalls Sosabravo's attentive gaze at the technique of colour engraving.
"I didn't teach it, we share ideas," explains the Vice President of the Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC). In her intervention she praised the rigour with which the Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Arts (2000) dominates the technique of the blade, "almost chiseling the pieces".
For his part, Sosabravo assures to continue painting as long as he has firmness in the stroke. When he creates, he says he always thinks of third parties, of the other, of those who will have his pieces, his ideas, his inspiration, part of his life.
Maxima is honored with the paintings of the artist Acto de Magia, Perdida en la Manigua and Volando en compañía. In them you will see with your own eyes an unmistakable style, where the dramaturgy and the content of each work will surprise you with its visual power and personality. The artist has left a piece of himself in his pieces, but the paintings breathe and whisper in our ear with their own voice. Living Cuban art in our Gallery-Studio is a more than pleasant experience.
Published 30/10/2019.
SEE WORKS OF SOSABRAVO: http://www.maximacubart.com/autor/alfredo-sosabravo