CubaPLUS Magazine

Precision in drawing, the excellent handling of pigments and an intelligent and humanistic approach to modernity are characteristic of the work of Yovani Caisés Almaguer (Holguín, 1974), an artist who has achieved a unique harmony between academics, experience and inspiration.

Caisés studied at the Vocational and Professional School of Fine Arts in his native Holguín, where he graduated in Painting, Drawing, Engraving, Photography and Sculpture in 1994.

His first artistic exercises were related to sacred art, and he was even called to participate in the restoration of the Cathedral of San Isidoro in Holguín, a time when he created works such as Los evangelistas y La multiplicación de los panes y los peces (Evangelists and the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes.)

At first, Caisés leaned towards ancient art, which he kept recreating into a more personal project, reinventing characters, making models out of everyday life, of people walking down the street, all of which symbolized a spectrum of emotions, and it evolved into a new style.

Modern technology and how human beings relate to it also occupied space in the painterrsquo;s work, in a peculiar mixture of expressionism and figurative art.

In the challenging search for his own path in art, Caisés found solutions that gave a twist to his work and lead to a new mix of neo-figurative and abstract art.

His recent exhibition Provocaciones (Provocations), a collection of pieces that revel in detail and invite diversity of thought, is a splendid example of this artistrsquo;s current work.

School gives you a complete basic training in classical figurative painting, renaissance, baroque ... and from there one obtains the tools to do the painting Irsquo;m doing now," the artist said to Cubaplus.

I think," he said, that figurative art is not just portraying reality in a certain way, it is giving the vision that I have of it through those stains that I have learned to enjoy, and are suggestions, effects of the visual arts, propositions to the spectator to come up with his own creation when he sees the painting."

Yovani Caisés Almaguer has shown his paintings in numerous solo and group exhibitions in countries such as Cuba, the United States, Spain, Argentina, Germany and Puerto Rico.