Eduardo Abela

EDUARDO ABELA (San Antonio de los Baños, 1889 - Havana, 1965)
Untitled.
Oil on board.
Signed.
Measurements: 27 x 22 cm; 40 x 35,5 cm (frame).

In this painting, Eduardo Abela represents a winged female figure in front of the marine horizon. The woman raises an arm holding a lit torch, symbol of light, knowledge and hope, while with the other arm she seems to carry an offering, perhaps floral or fruit, which refers to fertility, gratitude and Caribbean spirituality. The composition is frontal, simple, and is modeled with firm contours and flat colors, characteristic traits of the primitivism or naïf art that Abela adopted in part of his production.

In this work, the legacy of Latin American muralism and symbolism can be seen, but reinterpreted from a lyrical point of view. The absence of academic perspective, the clarity of the drawing and the chromatic purity give the figure an iconic presence, close to the syncretic deities of the Caribbean, as well as reminiscent of the Greek Niké.

Through this winged woman, Abela articulates a poetics of spiritual crossbreeding: she combines Christian elements (the torch as divine light, the wings as an angelic attribute) with Afro-Caribbean and pagan echoes (the offering, the connection with the sea). The result is a deeply symbolic image, where the ideal of rebirth and hope is expressed with the apparent naiveté of naïf art, but sustained by a deeply Cuban cultural and spiritual intention.

Eduardo Abela was a versatile Cuban artist. He trained at the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts in Havana; and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, France. He was a founding member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the Estudio Libre de Pintura y Escultura de La Habana, of which he was also director, and participated as a juror in the VIII National Salon of Painting and Sculpture. He began to publish humorous drawings in Havana newspapers. He lived and worked in Spain between 1921 and 1924, year in which he returned to Cuba. His first exhibition was held in 1924 at the Salón de Arte Moderno in Madrid. In 1926 he created his most famous character El Bobo, which served as an instrument of struggle against the tyranny of Gerardo Machado. El Bobo gave him a wider and more effective type of popularity: influence in the social milieu as a witty and sharp humorist, and economic development. The press "paid" because Abela's cartoons were sought every day by the mass of readers. While the Machado dictatorship was sinking in blood and outrages, El Bobo mocked censorship and "passed for Bobo, but he was alive like so many Cubans in the street". The fall of Machado in 1933 marked the end of his journalistic work; at that time he went to Italy and as consul of the Cuban government he arrived in Milan. Back in Cuba he painted some of his notable works of that period: Guajiros (awarded in the II National Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture of 1938) and Los novios (The bride and groom). He created the Estudio Libre para Pintores y Escultores (Free Studio for Painters and Sculptors), for an anti-conventional and truly stimulating teaching of artistic creation. He joined the work of painters who introduced more modern artistic languages and exhibited in the New Art exhibition. He traveled to Europe and lived in Paris for two years, acquiring enough success to exhibit at the Zak Gallery. Between 1942 and 1952 he carried out diplomatic missions in Mexico and Guatemala; in the latter country he received the National Painting Prize (1947). There he also produced El Caos (1950), which marked a substantial transformation of his expressive language: from medium-format paintings to small-scale pieces; from a solid modeling of figures to an idyllic, detailed, meticulous atmosphere, with references to the world of Paul Klee and Marc Chagall. After returning to Cuba in 1954, he produced a remarkable quantity and quality of small jewels, which he exhibited in numerous shows, including a retrospective at the Havana Gallery in 1964. In 1957 he exhibited for the first time in a group show during the IV Biennial of São Paulo, held at the Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 1981 a tribute exhibition to Eduardo Abela was held during the II International Biennial of Humorism, held at the Eduardo Abela Gallery in San Antonio de los Baños, Havana.