Ernesto García Peña

ERNESTO GARCÍA PEÑA - Matanzas, March 6, 1949 He graduated from the National School for Art Instructors in 1965, and from the National School of Art (ENA) in 1970, specializing in painting. In 1987 he graduated from the Higher Institute of Art (ISA), specializing in engraving. He has been a professor of drawing at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana, and of drawing, engraving and painting at the National School of Art of Cubanacan, where he was also head of the department in these specialties. He has been a consultant for study programs and curriculums of drawing, and has collaborated with various book publishing houses throughout his career. He is a member of the Experimental Graphics Workshop of Havana, of the International International Association of Plastic Artists of UNESCO (AIAP) and of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). --- ... There are three essential elements here: the first is the eroticism as part of reality, of the way we are. There is the voluptuousness of nature in the relationship of the archipelago with the sea, in the fury of the hurricane, and in the palm tree... Before explaining anything, feeling precedes knowledge – and in order to understand the feelings one has to know this artist – this artist who only continues to create through his window, regarding himself in his own mirror. There is no insincere emotion here; there is nothing – forgive me – that has not been lived intensely.... The artist remains intact. The sources of his visions are the same, but only the artist has the privilege of doing what he is doing this afternoon - disrupting our previous idea of things and always giving us, through the prism of his eyes, something totally new... Fragment of the words pronounced by Dr. Eusebio Leal Spengler, Historian of the City of Havana, at the inauguration of the exhibition El alma desnuda (The Naked Soul)