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• Arts and Culture
• Caribbean
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• Havana
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• Paint and Sculpture
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• 02 / 22 / 2009

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The tribute to Servando, which last for a year, has included transitory exhibitions, concerts, workshops, conversations and other activities that have been held in the mentioned institution, one of the youngest museum places of Cuba, as well as in other interested places. The Museum – Library is basically made by the collections that belonged to Servando, his own plastic work in each one of his stages, visual creations of several colleagues and students, popular art and decorative craftworks from several countries, a large number of books about art, personal and family objects.

Some days ago, the Museum – Library held a transitory exhibition dedicated to pay tribute to Teatro – Estudio, a Cuban revolutionary theatre group that became 40 years in year 2008 and that was the group of important actors such as Raquel and Vicente Revuelta, the filmmaker Julio Garcia Espinoza and the own Servando.

This creator was linked with the group before it was named Teatro - Estudio, as he declared in a material published in the magazine Revolucion y Cultura in March 1978. Then he stated: "Now the times in which I conceived the the symbol of the group seems distant – I never call it logotype, that word came later – that was created as a need of the members of the group. The symbol is still racing, as a horse with its horseman (…) its creation is part of the stile in whch people worked during those days, pure lines, synthesis of some stories and drawings that preceded the paintings, such as La bella durmiente and Tierra adentro".

Nowadays the Museum – library is exhibiting another transitory exhibition (Una devoción compartida), that links Servando with the popular religious images. As Eusebio Leal stated in the opening words of this exhibitions, the artists collected "ex-voto that were rare in Mexico or in the Old Guatemala (…).the nicest nativity scenes from Spain and the Americas, from Greece and from other places. All of that creates a collection of images with such a deep Christian root that is born from the old cult to the saints he had also transformed, with the noble reality of this island where so many saints live among us in many mysterious ways".

That collection of Servando was mixed with a selection of religions china products collected by the famous Cuban writer and ethnologist Miguel Barnet, who at the opening of the exhibition declared he was feeling "a great sorrow, a great modesty, because the pieces that were collected by Servando have a relevance and a value that my pieces do not have. I have collected these pieces by chance, without searching them, they came to me. I found them, above everything else, in Latin America, in some European countries and even in Africa".

Some pieces were a gift and some others were acquired in some street markets. Those objects are from different origins and have as a common situation, their manufacture and their insertion as part of the vast and diverse icon repertoire generated by Christianity. Both the research and literate and the visual artists were initiated in the catholic religion from their childhood, were attracted by the high aesthetic value of the pieces and recognised the creativity of the popular authors, whose works are exhibited today at the Museum – Library without been able, with absolute certainty, to know the author.

The exhibitions in tribute to Teatro – Estudio and Una devoción compartida are two actions that have also been possible thanks to the collaboration with many cultural entities, among them the National Council of Cultural Patrimony and Stage Arts. In year 2009 the Museum – Library edited an illustrated calendar with works of the epic stage of Servando, which belong to different collections. They are in the process of preparing a biography about the life and work of the creator who died in 1981.


(Galeriascubanas.com)