I doubt that in Cuban painting there is a more sensual blue than Servando blue. The bodies unite and disunite and mix and complement and one tends to look the other way, as ashamed in front of so much nudity disguised as blue and so exposed simultaneously.
Titled “The source of life”, The Kingdom of this World gallery at the José Martí National Library exhibits these days and until December 14 a sample of erotic paintings by Servando Cabrera Moreno, many never before exhibited and belonging to the museum that bears his name.
The selected pieces, among which are “Who cares” “Dawn” or “unknown and young Love” offer a tour of the artist’s work between 1970 and 1981.
The exhibition is also a tribute by the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum Library and the House of the Festival of New Latin American Cinema to the Cuban painter in the 90th anniversary of his birth and Alfredo Guevara, who inaugurated it in 1998 with an exhibition by the same name.
Servando graduate of San Alejandro art school in 1942 just in time for his painting to star in a nomadic stage through different styles, always with strong, clear drawings. Captivated by a violent expressionism, around 1970, finally grotesque figuration disappears and gives way to erotic painting.
The Spanish writer and artist Antonio Saura, defines his paintings: “… naked bodies as mountains, as if Nature was conceived as a giant open body, maternal and cosmic bodies as endless columns, large geological bodies lying”.