Exhibition
Cuban Master was a solo exhibition featuring the work of the renowned Cuban artist Adigio Benitez. In recognition of the long-shared history between Cayman and Cuba, the artist was invited to exhibit at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands as part of a wider celebration of the artistic and cultural connection that exists between the two countries.
Commenting on the varied assortment of geometric mixed media paintings and representational graphite drawings, National Gallery founding Director Leslie Bigelman described Benitez’s work as “combining the figures and images of artists such as Picasso with a contemporary use of geometric forms” while speaking to the “landscapes and legends of Cuba” in an evocative and distinctive style.
Cuban Master was on view at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands’ Alexander Place location from 19 February – 20 April 2002.
About the Artist
Adigio Benítez
1924–2013
Adigio Benítez was one of the most representative Cuban artists between the 1950s and 1960s. The artist graduated from the National School of Fine Arts “San Alejandro” in 1949 and worked as a caricaturist cartoonist in Havana’s newspaper Hoy before and after the triumph of the Revolution. In the mid-1940s, his cartoons and political drawings began to echo the spirit that lived in those years. His work was distinguished by the great mastery of the brush and the formal conditions that dominated in any of the manifestations that he assumed. Benítez was a prodigious caricaturist, painter, designer, poet, and founding teacher at the National School of Plastic Arts and the Superior Institute of Art. In 2002, Adigio Benítez won the National Prize for Plastic Arts, awarded to him for his life work in the promotion of the plastic arts in Cuba and his contributions to contemporary artistic visibility.
