User:Gonzalo Borges

GONZALO BORGES A prominent Cuban painter and drawer, was born in La Habana Cuba in 1936. Since his early years his talent was evident for drawing, devoting particular attention to mythological African classic tales of the Yoruba religion. At the age of twelve years Borges began his first painting production in which he undertook those matters related to Cuban folklore. When he was only 15 years old in 1951, Borges joined the prestigious National Plastic Arts School of San Alejandro as a formal student in La Habana, Cuba, obtaining a scholarship to begin studies by opposition, duly reported in the Diario de la Marina, where the most important social and cultural news were published at the time. During six years of intense and advanced academic studies in San Alejandro, he received lessons and the personal instructions of consecrated Cuban painting professors such as René Portocarrero and Amelia Peláez, both painters and also from sculptor Florencio Gelabelt, among other outstanding professors of Cuban Plastic. Gonzalo Borges participated in 1954, being yet a painting student, in his first collective exposition which was held at the Exposition Hall of the National Plastic Arts School of San Alejandro, winning the first prize in a painting contest among a group of young Cuban artists. Due to his personal efforts toward learning, he spent years in mural painting with the famous Spanish fresh painting (Al Fresco) professor Vicente Klemade, becoming his assistant and direct pupil, participating with him in the production of several wall paintings where are evoked different Bible’s themes that are still kept in cathedrals and churches of Old Habana, being found in temples as Caridad del Cobre, monserrat, La Merced, San Juan Bosco, The Sacred Heart and others. Borges migrates to the United States in 1991. Borges’ paintings are a normative apportion inside the so called ethnic art, assuming deconstruction of cryptogram and symbols coming from the ancient culture, trying to impose a true Caribbean Speech.