Alpizar’s Windows

By Manuel Álvarez Lezama

…Today I would like to briefly comment on the work of Rubén Alpízar, born in Santiago de Cuba in 1965, and one of the virtuosos of the new Cuban Surrealism—a movement shaped both by the realities of Revolutionary Cuba and by the experience of Cuban exile.

The five paintings presented by Alpízar in this exhibition reveal an outstanding mastery of technique—figuration, color, composition—and an enormously fertile imagination rooted in his existential condition and his extensive knowledge of art history.

These five compositions—surprising, vibrant, humorous, and richly colored—belong to the series that he courageously titled The Vertigo of Freedom (1999). They may, of course, be viewed within a completely apolitical framework, using the imagery of Bosch as a point of reference; or they may be interpreted within an openly political context, where the Cuban Revolution—its achievements and failures—serves as the organizing structure.

The unifying element throughout the works is the image of falling into the void, into death, immediately recalling the tragic descent of the beautiful and arrogant Icarus as he attempted to reach the sun with wings made of wax.

In these paintings, Alpízar combines Renaissance codes with the Surrealism of twentieth-century masters to remind us that, ultimately, nothing truly changes. Yet the works remain profoundly contemporary, as they articulate the necessity of Freedom and because the artist has chosen to construct his narratives within distinctly postmodern “frames.” The action is always enclosed; within the paintings there are frames, powerful compartments, small spaces within an immense labyrinth of solitude…

Originally published in El Nuevo Día, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
On the occasion of the solo exhibition The Vertigo of Freedom, Museum of the Americas
September 26, 1999.