User:121itzel/sandbox

Rafael Soriano (November 23, 1920 – April 9, 2015) was a Cuban painter who lived in the United States. www.rafaelsoriano.com

Early life
Born November 23, 1920 in Cidra, Matanzas, Cuba, Rafael Soriano manifested an early inclination for painting. After completing seven years of study at Havana’s prestigious Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, he graduated in 1943 as Professor of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture. He then returned to Matanzas where he taught visual arts for close to two decades. Together with Manuel Rodulfo Tardo, Juan Esnard Heydrich and Roberto Juan Diago Querol he was one of the founders and later Director, of the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Matanzas, the most important art school in Cuba outside of Havana. He is one of the major Latin American artists of his generation and one of the premier painters of Cuba.

United States
In 1962, Soriano went into exile, settling in Miami with his wife Milagros and his daughter Hortensia until his death in 2015. He worked as a graphic designer and occasionally taught, first at the Catholic Welfare Bureau, and later at the Cuban Cultural Program of the University of Miami. Soriano avoided vernacular themes which dominated Cuban art from its emergence with the first Vanguard in the mid-twenties. His work proceeded along the paths of geometric abstraction in the course of 1950's and was part of the Ten Concrete Geometric painters but by the late 1960s, Soriano’s work took a radical turn. His brush began to create shapes; abstract expressions related to the emotions, feelings, meditations and mystical introspections. A novel treatment of light and color, transparencies and forms placed Soriano in a new aesthetic dimension and freed him from his earlier attachments to schools and tendencies. Through a highly refined technique, he became a master of luminosity, of the pictorial metaphor and of the metaphysical language of forms. In his amazing and highly complex images, light acts as both form and content. It is this unity of purpose and means of representation that constitutes Soriano’s transcendental contribution to contemporary visual discourse and elevates his artistic creation to universal rank.

Since his first exhibition in 1947 in Havana’s Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Rafael Soriano’s work has been represented in numerous individual exhibitions and close to two hundred collective shows. His paintings have traveled through the United States, Brazil, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Chile, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, Italy, etc. Currently his work is included in numerous private and public collections Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin; Denver Art Museum, Colorado; Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Jersey; Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Florida; Museo de Arte Zea, Medellin, Colombia; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba; Museum of Modern Art of Latin America (OAS), Washington, DC;Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, California; PAMM, Miami, Florida; CIFO, Miami, Florida; Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Galeria de Arte Moderno, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and in other important institutions and corporations.

His Foundation
After Rafael Soriano’s death in 2015, his family created the Rafael Soriano Foundation in order to encourage a deeper appreciation of his artwork as one of the major Latin American Artist of his time. This Foundation in particular promotes exhibitions that focus on his work in order to be placed in museums and collections around the globe. They also maintain a main database that catalogues all his work that was made solely by Soriano.

Aside from their main purpose they have donated two major paintings to the Smithsonian Art Museum. Paintings donated include Candor de la Alborada (Candor of Dawn) 1994 and Un Lugar Distante (A Distant Place) 1972.

Featuring “The Artist as Mystic” El Artista Como Mistico
It featured nearly 100 paintings by Soriano as well as pastels and drawings also made by him. Theme was focused on his development as an artist by analyzing his early midway works such as his emigration where his style went through a change.


 * 1) October 2013 – May 2016 - The Smithsonian Museum featured it as part of its Latino Collection Artwork that explores how Latino Artist shaped the art movement of their time that influenced American art and culture.
 * 2) January 30th to June 4th, 2017 -  McMullen Musuem of Art
 * 3) June 29th to October 1st, 2017 - Long Beach Museum of Art
 * 4) October 23rd to January 28, 2018 - Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum. McMullen Museum of Art organized exhibition, Boston College collaborated with the Rafael Soriano Foundation and was curated by Elizabeth Thompson Goizueta.

Others

 * 1) August 30th to October 22nd, 2017 - Coral Gabels Museum displayed the “Real and Imagined: Abstract Art” from CINTAS that explored the art abstraction along side other artist such as Mario Carreno, Jose Mijares and other artists.