Tag Archives: Fidelio Ponce de Leon

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

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And I’m not only talking about the state-subsidized ice cream parlor in Havana, where Cubans wait in line for hours for the flavor of the day–at times with empty plastic containers in tow.*

This is where they hide all they good stuff: the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes’ Coleccion de Arte Cubano. The museum proceeds chronologically from the pre-Colonial to contemporary post-Revolution Cuban art. Here they have a horde of works by the under-appreciated Fidelio Ponce de Leon and some of Wilfredo Lam‘s most famous paintings, including La Silla, as well as extensive drawings of his. After reading up on these painters a few months ago, it was a joy to see them.

Fidelio Ponce de Leon is an artist who is difficult to research, and there I was in the museum without even a pen to jot down the titles of his works! Unfortunately the museum is extensively staffed with gaurds who shout their Draconian policy of “No Foto,” even when you are photographing the caption next to the painting. It is a shame because there were many interesting artists who were new to me. To top it off, now that I have returned to the land of the internet, I find that the museum does not have a website. I guess I’ll have to wait a little longer on that one.

Another place that holds some good stuff, if you’ll allow me to toot my own horn, is Escape Into Life online arts journal, which posted an essay of mine last night. You might remember that I wrote a bit about Gauguin before on this blog, about the time I was writing about Ponce de Leon and Lam. If you want to continue the stroll down Memory Lane, check out Paul Gauguin and Savageness on Escape Into Life.


*You can buy roughly 50 scoops for the equivalent of 1 USD!, so it makes sense to fill up while you can.

Outside the Vangaurdia: Fidelio Ponce de Leon

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Figuras

My trip to the library afforded me, among other treasures of the non- supernatural romance variety, a book on Caribbean art. In reading about the Cuban vangaurdia of the 1930s, I learned about a movement that was trying to define Cuban-ness and espoused the forms of Modernism. Ironically, these post-colonial activists espoused Gauguin’s Primitivism as much as Cubism or Futurism. One prominent artist of the time stood apart from this. Fidelio Ponce de Leon focused on depicting a somber, internal world rather than making socio-political statements or studying European schools.

Ninos

The artist lead a bohemian life, disappearing for years at a time to travel around the countryside. Few fixed details are known. Originally born Alfredo Fuentes Pons in 1895, he entered the San Alejandro Academy in Havana to receive drawing classes when he was about 20. He is said to have had a vivid imagination and created his own name. Unlike fellow vangaurdia artists, he never travelled to Europe to study. Instead, he disappeared on foot into the countryside where he worked his way through the land. Ponce de Leon came back an alcoholic with tuberculosis in 1930. Despite these circumstances, his work was shown in Havana and he began to receive critical attention. In 1943, he began rambling again and six years later he died of tuberculosis.

Five Women

This mysterious outsider is sometimes considered the most authentic Cuban artist of his time because of his lack of interest in European styles. However, he did travel to Russia and Mexico, and listed influences such as Modigliani and El Greco. As you can tell from these images, Ponce de Leon was obsessed with the color white, which he used to call “pintura nacarada,” nacarada meaning mother of pearl color. He enjoyed Kandinsky’s words that white acts like “a deep and absolute silence full of possibilities.”