Extra Credit: Cuban painter Rafael Soriano

Post date: Mar 14, 2017 1:24:31 PM

BC's McMullen Museum of Art, January 30–June 4, 2017: http://www.bc.edu/sites/artmuseum/exhibitions/soriano/

For extra credit, respond to these questions in detailed, vibrant paragraphs: 1) What did you see/feel/experience at the exhibit? How was the art presented? How did his content and style change over time? Why? 2) Can you tell he was Spanish from his art work? Why or why not?; 3) Photograph + describe your favorite piece and explain why; 4) What questions are you left with? Other reactions that you would like to share?

Cuban painter Rafael Soriano (1920–2015) was an acclaimed master of geometric abstraction and a global figure in the twentieth-century art world; his work resonated with international artists of Latin American origin like Roberto Matta, Rufino Tamayo, and Wifredo Lam. As a result of the Revolution in Cuba, in 1962 Soriano immigrated to the United States. An unprecedented examination of his life’s work, this exhibition focuses on the multiple influences that nurtured a style where, in his words, “the intimate and the cosmic converge.”

Featuring more than ninety paintings, pastels, and drawings from the Rafael Soriano Family Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Art Museum of the Americas, and Long Beach Museum of Art as well as other institutions and private collections, The Artist as Mystic begins with Soriano’s works in the Cuban geometric abstract style. It then moves to his transitional, experimental paintings from the 1960s and 1970s reminiscent of surrealist biomorphism. The exhibition concludes with luminous, mystical imagery in paintings from Soriano’s mature period.