Texts by Ramón Alejandro, Carol Damian, Henry Drewal, Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, and Jack Rasmussen
Carlos Luna, one of the foremost contemporary Cuban award-winning painter is part of a generation of Cuban artists who embrace their strong heritage and traditions but have reinvented themselves along the way.
Thrumming with the spirit of Afro-Cuban tradition, Luna’s works range from jacquard tapestries, works on metal sheets, and Talavera ceramic plates to mixed media on wood and large-scale oil paintings.
This monograph illustrates Luna’s blend of influences from living and working in Cuba until 1991, then in Mexico for 13 years, and now in Miami since 2002.This book, lavishly illustrated will take the reader through the artist’ amazing world made of bright colors and will show, by a selection of plates and details, some unpublished works as well as his renown masterpieces.
Carlos makes visible the invisible, conveying messages and lessons from his past to offer to the present and future.
His work is not on the surface, it is filled with subtle messages embedded. One must know the issues to decode. Often these messages are hidden in plain sight, lessons to be learned through reflection.
His towering centerpiece, “El Gran Mambo,” a massive six-panel painting stood on display at the Museum of Latin American Art in 2008 serves as a focal point for 2015’s “Green Machine: The Art of Carlos Luna” at The Frost Art Museum in Carlos’s adopted home of Miami.
Ramón Alejandro is a writer and a painter who has lived in exile in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paris, France, and now resides in Miami, Florida. Ramon has a playful and vivid way to illustrate Luna’s work. He uses comparisons to works that have transcended cultural barriers to illuminate the impact the artist’s work has had on the audiences that have been exposed to it. “Outside of any circumstance and time, there are works that transcend cultural barriers and the greatest lengths of time, provoking that very emotion accessible to all members of our species which timeless beauty produces.”
Carol Damian, Ph.D., is Professor of Art History in the Department of Art + Art History at Florida International University. She has also written articles and art catalogs about many Cuban and Cuban-American artists such as Wilfredo Lam, Cundo Bermúdez, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Agustín Fernández, Emilio Sánchez, and Humberto Calzada.
Henry Drewal He has served as Curator of African Art at the Neuberger Museum-SUNY-Purchase (1986), The Cleveland Museum of Art (1988-90), and Curator of African Art at the Toledo Museum of Art (1989). Since 1991 He has been the Evjue-Bascom Professor of Art History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Adjunct Curator of African Art at the Chazen Museum of Art, UW-Madison.
D. Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz is Associate Professor – Section Head in the History of Art & Discourse of Art division at Michaelis School of Fine Art (Cape Town, South Africa). He also serves as editor for the Cuban Studies Magazine and for Harvard University’s Transition magazine and is a Pacific Standard Time LA/LA research fellow from 2014-2017 at The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles California
Jack Rasmussen is the Director and Curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. He previously held Executive Director positions at di Rosa Preserve: Art & Nature, Maryland Art Place, and Rockville Arts Place. He was the owner and director of Jack Rasmussen Gallery in Washington, DC.
