Desiderio Navarro

Desiderio Navarro Pérez was a Cuban critic and theorist of literature, art and culture. His work was aimed at the exercise of criticism on scientific bases. Art theory, aesthetics, culturology and literary sciences are widely present in his works. He translated texts from these disciplines into Spanish from twenty languages.

Career
Navarro was born on May 13, 1948, in Camagüey, and died in Havana on December 7, 2017. In the middle of the sixties he started to publish his first articles and studies in several Cuban and foreign magazines, in the field of literature, visual arts, aesthetics and cultural science.

Over time, his articles were published in magazines and papers in North and Latin America, and Europe. He has been a visiting professor at various universities and institutes in the world, and he organizes debates between international speakers. His books have been published in more than ten languages.

In 1972 he founded the journal Criterios. In 1994 the book series Criterios, and in 2011 the e-zine Denken Pensée Thought Mysl. Information Service on European Cultural Thought. In this leading magazine (cf. www.criterios.es) he brings together important essays from various languages on themes like aesthetics, literature, art and culture. Next to those, he writes articles himself as well.

He has translated from sixteen Romance, Germanic, Slavic and Uraloaltaic languages over 450 theoretical texts on literature, arts, culture and society. These translations have been published in Cuba, Spain and Mexico.

In 2003 he founded the Center for Cultural Theory Criterios (Havana).

Recognition
In 1996 Navarro received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Furthermore, he received a grant from the Prince Claus Fund from the Netherlands twice, in 1999 and 2005, in order to be able to continue his project Criterios.

Furthermore, he was honored with a number of awards, of which the following is a (translated) selection:
 * 1985: Prize for Criticism of Visual Arts of Salón, (UNEAC, Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba)
 * 1983 and 1988: National Prize of Literary Criticism Mirta Aguirre
 * 1986 and 1991: Translation Prize for lifetime work (UNEAC)
 * 1987: Critics National Prize, Ministry of Culture
 * 1988: Award Reason to Be of the cultural center Alejo Carpentier
 * 1989: Translation prize of the cultural center Juan Marinello
 * 1989: Order of Cultural Merit, People's Republic of Poland
 * 1995: Prize for the lifetime work in criticism, Argentine society for art critics
 * 2003: Medal Alejo Carpentier of the State Council of Cuba
 * 2006: National Editors' Prize of the Cuban Institute of the Book
 * 2008 Distinction Polonicum, Center for Polish Culture and Language, Warsaw University
 * 2009: Prince Claus Award, Prince Claus Fund, Netherlands

In recognition of his life's work, in 2022 the University of Sancti Spiritus Jose Marti Perez created the Desiderio Navarro Honorary Chair in order to carry out cultural research and study the work of this Cuban scientist.

Works
Navarro wrote and published the following books:
 * 1986: Cultura y marxismo: Problemas y polémicas
 * 1989: Ejercicios del criterio
 * 2007: Las causas de las cosas
 * 2008: A pe(n)sar de todo

Navarro has edited 22 anthologies of which the following is a selection. Some works have been reprinted several times.
 * 1975: Cultura, ideología y sociedad
 * 1981: Anatoli Lunacharski. Sobre cultura, arte y literatura
 * 1986: Textos y contextos, t. I y II
 * 1994: Patrice Pavis. El teatro y su recepción. Semiología, cruce de culturas y postmodernismo
 * 1996: Iuri Lotman. La semiosfera, t. I, II y III
 * 1997: Intertextualité. Francia en el origen de un término y el desarrollo de un concepto
 * 2002: Image 1: Teoría francesa y francófona del lenguaje visual y pictórico
 * 2004: Intertextualität 1:, Alemania en la teoría de la intertextualidad
 * 2006: Stefan Morawski. De la estética a la filosofía de la cultura
 * 2007: El Postmoderno, el postmodernismo y su crítica en Criterios
 * 2008: Borís Groys. Obra de arte total Stalin. Topología del arte
 * 2009: El pensamiento cultural ruso en Criterios
 * 2011: Henryk Markiewicz. Los estudios literarios: conceptos, problemas, dilemas
 * 2011: Wolfgang Welsch. Actualidad de la estética. Estética de la actualidad