RAFAEL SORIANO CUBAN BORN PAINTER
(1920 – 2015)
Born in 1920 in the town of Cidra in the province of Matanzas, Rafael Soriano manifested an early inclination for painting. After completing seven years of study at Havana’s prestigious Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, he graduated in 1941 as Professor of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture. He then returned to Matanzas where he taught visual arts for close to two decades. He was a co-founder, and later Director, of the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Matanzas, the most important art school in Cuba outside of Havana. He was one of the major Latin American artists of his generation and one of the premier painters of Cuba.
“I do not pretend to transmit a message of reality: I am moved by the longing to travel through my paintings in a dimension of spirit where the intimate and the cosmic converge.”
“No pretendo transmitir ningún mensaje de la realidad: me mueve un ansia de viajar a través de la pintura por la dimension del espíritu, donde lo intimo y lo cósmico confluyen.”
RAFAEL SORIANO FOUNDATION
The Rafael Soriano Foundation is created by Soriano’s family in order to preserve and encourage an understanding and appreciation of Soriano’s artwork as he is one of the major Latin American artists of his generation. The Foundation promotes exhibitions and scholarship about the artist and seeks to place his pieces in important museums and collections around the world for all to enjoy.
“My paintings are subjective and surge from my own psyche and are a testimony of the birth of light and its figuration in the intimate and the immensity of the cosmos. Forms take shape in my canvas the instant that the imagination is ignited and the creativity surges as in a dream.”
“Mi pintura es subjetiva, surge de mi propia Psiquis y es testimonio del nacimiento de la Luz y sus figuraciones en lo íntimo de mi o en la inmensidad del cosmos. Plasmo en mis lienzos el instante en que la imaginación se enciende y la creatividad surge como un ensueño.”
