More than 65 works, mainly canvas, engravings, sculptures and ceramics of recognized artists of the plastic arts were donated to the city of Santiago de Cuba, province that still is recovering from the damages caused by hurricane Sandy last October.
The inventory of originals signed by the National Awards of Plastic arts, Roberto Fabelo and Ever Fonseca, as well as for young people painters, was motivated by the call for humanitarian aid that — in November, 2012 — Nelson Domínguez, recipient of the national award of the speciality five years ago, made.
With an approximate value of 120 thousand CUC (some 140,000 USD), from the value fixed by each author — with works which prices range from 50 to 25 thousand CUC—, the donation in a beginning was thought as an auction. Nevertheless, the collection will be put complete to disposition of the new public spaces and rehabilitated museums of the eastern Cuban city.
It was Domínguez who explained, days before the donation, that, with this idea he tried “to do everything possible for contributing with the reconstruction of my native province”
“I am santiaguero, I was born in Baire, but what happened in Santiago concerns me not only for being from the East but for being a Cuban; this way the invitation was born in which many painters have taken part, some consecrated and others very young that also answered the call ”.
Under the name For Santiago the best thing, the donation counted with specializing patronage of the Coral Negro Group of the CIMEX Corporation, Havana Club S.A. by means of his project Havana Cultura and the Caguayo Foundation of Santiago de Cuba.
The painter, who inaugurated last week in Matanzas the exhibition Self-portraits — an exhibition of 160 works that in advance has been exhibited in other provinces and, especially, in the Heredia Theater, where Nelson reveals that the vanity of santiaguero invaded him—, he affirms that the Cuban artists have always been along with the social, political and economic processes. “Cuba is living through new moments that demand to keep alive the humanity and solidarity.”
(by A.D.R.)