By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer. Yahoo! November 17,
2000
HAVANA, 17 (AP) - Old Spanish castles, cobblestone plazas, libraries and
schoolrooms across the Cuban capital have been transformed into galleries for
the Biennial of Havana art festival.
"This will be a great fiesta of visual arts from Cuba and the world,''
Rafael Acosta de la Arriba, head of the National Council of Visual Arts,
announced on the eve of the festival's Friday opening.
About 200 contemporary painters, sculptors and performance artists from more
than 40 countries will be showing their works at a score of sites around Havana
during the biennial, which runs through Jan. 5.
The artists include several dozen Cubans, many of them young unknowns. The
biennial has been a springboard for young Cuban artists, who often make their
first contacts with international gallery owners and museum curators during the
festival.
"Cuban art has recently gained a lot of attention, but the biennial
will not lose its international character,'' said Acosta de la Arriba.
A few of the offerings: Stark black-and-white photographs of Old Havana;
colorful, almost childlike paintings of human figures and a painting on a bed
sheet of Cuba and Majorca, Spain, connected by crisscrossing lines.
Among the better-known artists featured is Jean Michel Basquiat, a Brooklyn,
N.Y.-born graffiti artist-turned-painter who died in 1988 at age 27 of a drug
overdose. An exhibit of his works opens Saturday and runs through Jan. 10.
More than 70 works by some of Cuba's most prominent contemporary artists
will go up for bidding Saturday in an auction to raise funds for the children's
ward of the Oncology Hospital in Havana.
Photographs by Alberto Korda, famous for his portraits of revolutionary
Ernesto "Che'' Guevara, are among the works donated for the auction, as are
paintings by Alfredo Sosabravo and Manuel Mendive.
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