Victor Manuel Garcia

VÍCTOR MANUEL GARCÍA VALDÉS (Havana, 1897 - 1969).
"Still life", 1947.
Mixed media on hard cardboard.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 64 x 48 cm; 90,5 x 75 cm (frame).

In the still life presented here, Victor Manuel expresses his distinctive style through a palette of vibrant colors. The composition, of cubist heritage and densely elaborated, is presided over by a vase of carnations in the center of the table, accompanied by a bowl of grapes and two pieces of fruit.

Qualified as the father of the Golden Age of Cuban painting, Victor Manuel Garcia was trained at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana. He holds his first individual exhibition until 1924, and the following year he travels to Paris. He returns to Cuba in 1927, and that same year he takes part in the exhibition of the Association of Painters and Sculptors of Havana, considered one of the starting points of modern Cuban painting. He then embarks again for Europe, starting a trip that will take him to Spain and Belgium, returning to Cuba in 1929. That same year he created his most famous work, "The Tropical Gypsy", popularly known as "the American Gioconda", which is currently kept in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. In 1935 he was awarded first prize at the Havana Lyceum Exhibition, and continued to hold exhibitions of his work both in Cuba and abroad. Victor Manuel's style was not monolithic, but evolved greatly throughout his life. His early paintings show a tendency to mix European styles with an earthy primitivism, an example of which is his piece La Gitana Tropical (1929). In the 1940s and 1950s however, he adopted a more stylized look that became a hallmark of his work. During the last years of his life, his style became almost abstract, with portraits suggesting a close proximity to the aesthetics of Cubism. He was very inconsistent in signing his work, ranging from a simple "VICTOR MANUEL" in capital letters to a fluid and complicated script, and even used a pseudonym at one period of his life. He was eminently a portraitist of female faces, as well as a painter of landscapes, both rural and urban.