Juan T. Vázquez Martín

Juan T. Vázquez Martín

Details of Juan T. Vázquez Martín's paintings
Born (1941-12-23) December 23, 1941
Caibarién, Las Villas, Cuba
Nationality Cuban
Education Drawing and painting teacher
Notable work Painter
Movement New Abstraction
Awards He has received national and international awards. Also, he was nominated for the 'Joan Miró' Prize in Barcelona in 1970 and 1971.

Juan T. Vázquez Martín (born December 23, 1941 in Caibarién, Las Villas, Cuba) is a Cuban abstract painter.

A Cuban painter who lives and works in Havana.

Member of the Writer and Artists Union of Cuba (UNEAC).

Member of International Association of Art (AIAP).

Vazquez Martin was several times selected by the artists members, as President and Vice-President of the Painting Association at the Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), in recognition to ‘his courage defending the contemporary painting in Cuba’, an office he held each time from 1989 to 1998

This painter is among the Cuban abstract painters masters. His work is held in a number of prestigious collections of national and international institutions including UNESCO International Association of Art (AIAP) in Paris, the Spanish Office of the European Economic Community, New York and the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba.

As a teacher this Cuban painter has a good pedagogy technique. He teaches with an infinite source of creative classes to introduce and stimulate the students interest to the art of painting, its history and appreciation. Vazquez Martin believes that artists should know well the world where they live and how art has contributed to its development as well as its present influence and importance for the future.

Biography

Dr Josephine Reynell from Oxford Hertford College says: 'Juan T. Vazquez Martin is among of the great Cuban masters of painting; he is also considered to be one of Cuba’s leading abstract painters. Through dedication to artistic freedom he has played a seminal role in keeping abstract art alive in Cuba. The so-called Grey Period or El Quinquenio Gris in Cuban culture, between 1970–1976, seriously undermined abstract art and indeed experimentation in all areas of the arts in Cuba. Art was seen as a useful propaganda tool and whilst no artist was forbidden to work in a certain way, only those artists whose work conformed to what was considered acceptable were supported. Many artists left the country. Juan T. Vazquez Martin’s refusal to leave Cuba and his steadfast commitment to his personal artistic vision exacted a heavy economic and personal cost, losing him official patronage and promotion. His courageous maintenance of his artistic vision in the face of real hardship has nevertheless enabled him to develop a unique style of painting which now has had a profound influence on the new generation of young Cuban artists.

He has been Director of a number of Schools of Visual Arts in Cuba and has taught various well known Cuban artists including Flora Fong (exhibited in London 2007), Gabriel Gutierrez, Nasario Salazar, Oscar Rodriguez Laseria and Joel Jover.

At the age of 16, he won a prestigious and highly competitive scholarship to the Academia Leopoldo Romañach in Santa Clara, renowned as the most progressive art school in Cuba at that time. His art has been influenced by his close friendship with the renowned Cuban painters Hugo Consuega and Tapia Ruano, but over the years he has developed his own and unique style of painting.'

Critics

The Cuban painter and critic Manuel López Oliva writes

'Looking at Juan Vázquez Martín's paintings, what is immediately recognisable, is the Renaissance concept of 'the window', the dissolution of forms discovered by Kandinski, as well as the sense of textural beauty introduced by the contemporary painters of the matière school.

In essence, this involves a private display that allows the artist to make a series of paintings on canvas or cartridge paper, revealing to the viewer an ensemble of optical sensations that reflect the internal world of the artist.

We should not forget - because it was forgotten during the period of aesthetic and generational reductionism of the 1980s - that Vázquez Martín was a direct heir, in the 1960s, of the national abstract movement of the 1950s.

Nor should we lose sight of the fact that Juan Vázquez Martín, even when beleaguered in his career, never deviated from his artistic logic - a logic that kept alive and active non-representational forms of plastic art. He used the criterion of symbiotic expression by joining figurative and abstract elements in his overall scheme of things, coalescing them into ectoplasmatic forms, almost veils, that distinguished him in the Cuban canon of painters of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This distinguishing feature of his artistic personality is revealed in simply 'beautiful paintings' - it should be no crime to say so! - paintings in which perceptions of the environment are blended with intimate poetry.

Trying to define Vázquez Martín's works of art, applying a label to his paintings from one period to another, is almost impossible, save for a tendency towards 'abstract' painting; if pressed, you might call them 'lyric' or 'art autre', 'post' or 'neo' colour paintings.

His style is a skilful blend of the organic with geometry, of order with dissonance, of precise vision with suggestion. It is a whole language in itself, sincretic, and bearing a strong current of delight springing from the possibilities that he coaxes from the materials, methods and tools he uses to work with, the very keys to his paintings.

Critique by Manuel López Oliva, Cuban Painter and Art Critic, 1996. Translated by Marigold Best and Rayner Reissenberger.

Critique by Cristina Burke-Trees, Gallery Terracina director, England

"Juan T. Vazquez Martin is an artists Artist. His paintings are unquestionably of exquisite high standard, very beautiful and complete. As we say here in England, he is an artists Artist. This means in general, that only people that are used to look at art and are reasonably well educated understand the depth of his skill and complexity of his work. "

Gallery Terracina Haven Banks, Canal Basin, Exeter EX2 (The international community of artists was sad when this nice and important gallery closed its doors. Gallery Terracina became a virtual gallery on Internet) http://www.artterracina.co.uk/Welcome.html

Charges and Formation

Personal exhibitions (resume)

Collective exhibitions (resume)

Prizes and Mentions

Principal Collections that exhibit or store his works

Current events

Juan T. Vazquez Martin, Cuban Abstract painter exhibition promotion. (photo: Mercedes Soca Gil, Havana)

Publications where he is mentioned

See also

External links

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