CARLOS QUINTANA

Carlos Quintana (Havana, 1966) briefly attended the San Alejandro School of Fine Arts, and the Superior Institute of Industrial Design, both in Havana.

His works show the influence of paradigmatic artists such as Schnabel, Baselitz, Kiefer, and Goya. Quintana did not have a rapid rise in the national art scene of Cuba. One reason for this was that as a painter he traveled along alternative paths and did not participate in collective projects. He was a kind of renegade “underground” artist. His pictorial works include disturbing codes and discourses, as well as an almost obsessive interest in bearing witness to the offensive passages that show the violence and the filth of everyday life. He usually takes classic historical art scenes to represent daily conflicts, and his tendency to use a palette of solid colors adds a symbolic character to his work, which is full of cultural references.

Some of his most notable solo exhibitions include “Images of a Place that Never Existed” at the National Arts Club in New York NY, 2015; “Obsessions” at Atelierhaus in Berlin, Germany, 2012; “Nada (Nothing)” at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, 2011; “8cho” at Habana Gallery in Havana, 2009; “Norte (North)” at Orange Gallery in Montreal, Canada, 2008; Arario Gallery, Beijing, China; “Continuo (Continuous)” at Artificial Gallery in Madrid, Spain, 2007; “Con la sal en la Lengua (With salt on the Tongue)” at Gary Nader Gallery in Miami, Florida, 1998, “El mundo de la verdad”,  at Vatican Museums, Piazza della Cancelleria. Roma, May 25 – July 27. “In Finito” at Palazzo Loredan, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, San Marco, Venice. His works are part of the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana; the Gilbert Brownstone Foundation in Paris, France; the National Museum of Fine Arts in Panama City, Panama; as well as numerous private collections around the world.