The Wax Museum of Bayamo just turned ten years. Unique of its kind in Cuba, the popular facility receives more than a thousand visitors every day and is one of the preferred options in the summer. Coming soon they will add to its collection the sculptures of recently deceased Gabriel García Márquez and Juan Formell.
Both wax replicas are still in the workshop of sculptors. The first will be unveiled next August 13 while the second will be appreciated from the month of October.
These sculptures are modeled of polychrome wax and are the work of brothers Rafael and Leander Barrios Milan, and their father and teacher Rafael Barrios Madrigal. The artists primarily engaged in creating birds and other animals with this technique, in recent times have also been inspired to work with human figures, and to conduct demonstrations to the public that visits them in their gallery.
Many personalities already have their sculpture in famous wax museums. Among the most famous of its kind in the globe are Madame Tussauds, which opened in 1835 in London, UK. There are also wax museums in Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Shanghai and two in the United States.
Wax museums are not a new phenomenon, because this technique has hundreds of years, but have always been curious and entertaining to this day. Ours shows sixty nine figures. Thirteen life-size figures of various culture personalities and the rest of simulate fauna of the island.
The first example was the one of Polo Montañez, of who they had in 2003 a bust in the Artists and Artisans Fair and received an award for it.
Then the execution of the full body piece started in its normal size, in order to be presented at the FIART 2003 exhibition in the capital, to be marketed. Due to the interest of the government of the province of Granma it was decided to find a space for exhibition in a premise belonging to the Cuban Cultural Fund, the CERARTE Gallery, and its opening took place with the unveiling of the pieces of Polo Montañez and Compay Segundo, on July 14, 2004.
Located 842 kilometers east of Havana, it began as a simple decorated place to recreate typical peasant scenes and of the flora and fauna of the region, till they made it into a valuable art collection. The most praised feature sculptures are those of the heroes of the independence wars in Cuba, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and José Martí.
There you can also see i replicas of Benny Moré, Carlos Puebla, Sindo Garay, Rita Montaner, and among international personalities that of the American writer Ernest Hemingway. All have an amazing making and high precision in features and expressions.
This cozy relevant institution also exposes popular characters from Bayamo region, as in the case of Francisco Jerez, a tireless advocate of local history that was popularly known by the nickname of Paco Pila. Also there is the figure of Rita La Caimana, a unique character of the area passed to posterity through the lyrics of a famous song by the popular duo Los Compadres.
The curious pieces of wax with the seal of the Barrios sculptors became known in the early nineties among the inhabitants of Guisa, their hometown, and tourists visiting the picturesque mountain town in the eastern Sierra Maestra. They are also the creators of the wax bust of singer Nat King Cole which is located in the Hall of Fame of the Hotel Nacional in Havana.
Many visitors, both foreign and domestic, come daily to the site, without doubt one of the most popular and visited in Eastern Cuba. It requires recognizing the importance it has had for the country to have a Wax Museum, a tourist attraction and a significant contribution to popular culture, and including the city of Bayamo among the ten cities in the world with a museum of this type.
