Drawings, paintings and installations by Frank Martínez, winner of the 2001 La Joven Estampa Prize, awarded by Casa de las Américas.

Thirty-five works spanning from the 19th century to the present qith diverse aesthetic tendencies recreate an eternal and innate theme to Cuba as an island: the sea.

Personal exhibition of Cuban painter and designer Luis Martínez Pedro (1910-1989), one of the forerunners of abstract painting in Cuba, most famous for his Aguas Territoriales, a series of oil paintings and drawings where the sea plays the leading role. The work of Martínez Pedro also stands out for its precise composition and the intelligent and symbolic stylization of the human figure, especially female, as well as animal and plant elements.

This exhibition takes the viewer through the different stages of the 45-year long creative life of Cuban painter César Leal, his preferences and obsessions.

Under the topic “Understanding Contemporariness from the Mass Media”, the 12th Salón de la Ciudad aims to foster a space for the intervention of visual arts in today’s debate on the role of the mass media as “power” tools for reconstructing reality, and establishing consumer patterns and aesthetic canons. Although the exhibit is rather poor in terms of the number of works—only nine were selected out of 108—it is a way in which we may gauge the interests and concerns of the youngest generation of Cuban artists.

Exhibition by painter, draughtsman, ceramist, photographer, graphic designer and silk-screen printer Salvador Corratgé, forerunner in Cuba of geometric abstraction and founder of the group Diez Pintores Concretos.

Painters, sculptors, photographers, designers, writers and filmmakers pay tribute to Cuban avant-garde painter Carlos Enríquez, on occasion of the 70th anniversary of two of his emblematic award-winning (1938) paintings: El rapto de las mulatas and Campesinos felices. The painter and critic Manuel López Oliva has said of El Rapto…, “There are works that synthesize, somehow, the most characteristic signs and values of a given age, of a space of social existence and even of a manner to culturally appreciate anthropological and symbolic facets of people. This is the case…of the painting El rapto de las mulatas, conceived by the still young Carlos Enríquez.”

Oil and watercolour paintings by Michel Pérez (El Pollo), based on dolls and toys that are manipulated to give them a human being’s psychological character.

Based on two pictures by US photographer Richard Falco taken on September 11 at the World Trade Center, 41 Cuban engravers stamped their own view of the tragedy as part of the collaborative relationship of Havana’s Experimental Graphics Workshop with the School of Visual Arts of Nueva York.

Ileana Mulet, a painter who for years has focused on the urban landscape of Colonial Havana, exhibits paintings and poems, which go from expressionism to magic realism, using the salamander—for her, symbol of life and the aspiration to a harmonic relation with the environment—as leitmotiv.

From her professional experience as an architect and a photographer, Nancy Reyes, with a precise mastery of colour, light and composition in her stained-glass window-like paintings, recreates scenes of Havana, which the artist acknowledges as her permanent source of inspiration.

Exhibition by young Cuban painter Carlos Gámez de Francisco. According to its curator, Noemí Díaz Vichef, “with his work, Gámez de Francisco shows himself as an innovative psychologist with a touch of sociologist who mercilessly and unscrupulously pries into our most inner secrets.”

Painters Kadir López, Kelvin López, Fidel Micó, Joel Ferrer, Adigio Benítez, Lester Campa, Alan González and Racial Gómez give expression, in very different ways, to a topic that for years seemed exhausted: the landscape, and which today reappears with renewed strength.

Collective exhibition by Cuban and European artists which focuses on two instances of Cuban history: the founding, represented by the first maps made by European cartographers during colonial days, and the convulsive 1980s and 90s when the new generations, protagonists of a profound artistic renovation, reintroduced this representation and gave it new and controversial meanings.

On occasion of the centenary of this pioneer of kinetic art, outstanding Rumanian artist Sandu Darié (1908-1991), who made Cuba his second home from 1941 to his death, the museum has organized an exhibition that includes catalogues from his personal and collective exhibitions, photographs, as well as personal papers and objects, among other items. Several of Darié’s pieces may be seen in a number of Cuban institutions, such as the mobiles located in the lobby of the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana.

Twenty-nine canvases and one pictorial object (2003-2008) make up this exhibition which focuses on the view of the many times prize-winning artist from Valencia, Spain, Antoni Miró (1944) of different areas of city life. Here, by way of figurative expressionism and photorealism, Miró reflects on the city, man and art.

Books edited by the Spanish draughtsman, painter, engraver and poet Gabriel García Maroto, including photos and papers that bear witness to the artist’s sojourn in Cuba in the summer of 1930, comprise this exhibition of one of the most outstanding figures of the Spanish pictorial renovation of the early 20th century.

Painter Ana Iris Ávalos Texidó reflects on the implicit violence within Western culture aided by the iconography of the Japanese cartoon story.

Exhibition by Reynaldo García Márquez who explores marginality as a social and human event.

Exhibition by the 2003 National Visual Arts Prize-Winner, sculptor Osneldo García, who is recognized as a forerunner of kinetic art, performance and installations in the island, and whose works, made of metal or wood, have a good deal of eroticism and humour, which is considered one of the most significant contributions of this Cuban artist.

Dedicated this year to sculptures and installations, the Ceramic Biennial is a meeting of the best Cuban ceramists who express audacious modern aesthetics and spirit in one of the oldest crafts known to man. This collection of 36 pieces allows the viewer to approach the conceptual intensity and the strong formal manufacture of contemporary Cuban ceramics.

This exhibition by the 1997 National Visual Arts Prize-Winner, painter and ceramist Alfredo Sosabravo, takes the viewer on a journey around his broad creative spectrum: collages, ceramics, bronze and Murano glass sculptures, pieces that combine an exquisite mastery of technique with vivid colouring and exultant vitality.

The painter and architect Carlos Llanes, who prefers to describe himself as a photorealist rather than an abstractionist, gives us in this exhibition “a bold, experimental, critic and abstract look of the course, coexistence and mutations of a city,” according to the notes to the opening of the exhibition.

Dedicated to the principal dancer Viengsay Valdés, one of the most spectacular stars of Cuban classical ballet today, this exhibition captures outstanding moments in this young ballerina’s career.

Organized by pianist and composer Chucho Valdés. Cuban and international bands and soloists from several generations have confirmed their participation in this spectacular festival of improvisation.

Dedicated to Cuban composers Harold Gramatges and Alfredo Diez Nieto, on their 90th birthday. Soloists, chorals, chamber music ensembles, orchestras will perform works by important Cuban composers including Gramatges and Diez Nieto. International musicians from Italy, Canada, Austria, Holland, Spain, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Puerto Rico and Colombia will also perform in tribute to the Cuban composers. Collateral events including lectures, auditions, guest speeches and workshops will go hand in hand with the concerts.