Antonio Vidal Fernández

ANTONIO VIDAL FERNÁNDEZ (Havana, 1928 - 2013) .
Untitled.
Mixed media, collage, canvas on board.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 127.5 x 84 cm; 135.5 x 92 cm (frame).

In this painting, Antonio Vidal Fernández displays with full maturity his mastery of abstract languages and his ability to merge them into a visual syntax of great energy and dynamism. The areas of color are distributed like fragments of an emotional map or a landscape seen from above, in which each piece seems to preserve the memory of a different pictorial experience.

The mixed technique allows Vidal to build a tactile surface, where the impasto, the cut-outs and the glazes dialogue on the same plane. This visual "patchwork" responds to a geometric order that underlies an organic rhythm. The lines expand and cross each other like vectors of energy, while the circles and dark spots act as nuclei of attraction or black holes, absorbing the gaze towards the interior of the painting.

The result is a vibrant, polyhedral composition, where the material and the spiritual intertwine. The surface seems to contain both an interior geography and a cosmos in movement.m The color evokes moods: the greens and grays suggest nature and distance; the reds, vital pulsation; the blacks, depth and gravity. All this composes a visual universe that oscillates between chaos and harmony, between the immediacy of the stroke and the reflection of the painter who seeks, in each layer, an inner truth.

Thus, this work stands as a testimony of the maturity of Cuban abstractionism and of Antonio Vidal's deeply personal vision: an artist who turned pictorial matter into a territory of existential exploration.

Antonio Vidal Fernández was an important Cuban artist. He was a member of the group Los Once and a founding member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. He introduced abstract expressionism to the island, but he was not a follower of the movement and remained outside of fashions in order to find his own path. A graduate of the Villate Academy, he received the National Plastic Arts Award in 1999. Among his personal exhibitions it is worth mentioning: In 1993 "Antonio Vidal 40 years in the plastic", Paintings and Drawings of small format. Galiano and Concordia Art Gallery, Havana, Cuba. In 1953 he participates collectively in Los 11. Painters and Sculptors. Lyceum, Havana, Cuba. In 1963 and 1965 he participates in the First and Second American Biennial of Engraving. Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Chile, Santiago de Chile. In 1966 and 1968 in the 5th and 6th International Print Biennial. Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan. In the year 2000 "Tono a tono". Abstract Art Exhibition. Solidarity Hall, Habana Libre Tryp Hotel, Havana, Cuba, among others. In 1973 his work is recognized with the Second Prize in Painting. Salon of Professors and Instructors of Plastic Arts, National School of Art (ENA), Havana, Cuba. In 1981 Mention. First National Salon of Small Format, Lalo Carrasco Salon, Habana Libre Hotel, Havana. In 1999 National Plastic Arts Award. Ministry of Culture.

Founder of the Taller Experimental de la Gráfica de La Habana, in the 1960s, in which he developed a considerable number of works using the lithographic technique. During that period he made works for public places such as the mosaic murals in the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Theater in Ciudad Escolar Libertad and in the department store La Época. He taught painting classes at the National School of Art for two decades, in the 70's; and ten years later he experimented with sculpture but as an extension, a new support for his creations on canvas or paper. He also ventured into designs for book and magazine covers; in 1977 he published his sketchbook Antonio Vidal -published by the publishing house of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba-.

An important part of his work is kept in the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba.