Flavio Garciandía

Flavio Garciandía is one of Cuba’s leading and most influential artists and is regarded as one of the fathers of Central and South American conceptual art. The artist was a key figure on the vibrant Cuban art scene of the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1984 he was a co-founder of the Havana Biennal.

In his paintings he makes a profound connection with his native Cuba: through the way his works unite a range of postmodern styles, his creative output indirectly adapts and reflects Cuban culture as a fusion of diverse influences and terms of references. The artist cites the history of modern art: his colourful compositions adapt a variety of stylistic directions, from cubism to conceptualism and abstract expressionism. The resulting artistic signature is one that the artist himself describes, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, as New Tropical Abstraction – playing on the meteorological term Tropical Depression, which refers to a group of thunderstorms under a closed cloud cover.