Cuba, Key West art exchange bridges strait
Cuba, Key West art exchange bridges strait
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press | January 18, 2014
HAVANA (AP) Thirty woodcuts by the late Mario Sanchez are on display in Havana, the first exhibition of an American artist of Cuban descent to be featured in the Caribbean country's flagship National Museum of Fine Arts.
"One Race," which opened Friday, is part of an exchange between Havana and Key West under which several prominent Cuban artists will exhibit on the Florida island next month.
"This exhibit is about the human race: old, young, black and white, all genders, all sexes," curator Nance Frank told The Associated Press. "It's about equality. People working together and playing together and having fun together."
Sanchez, born in 1908, was the descendent of a Cuban family that came to Key West in the 19th century as part of a community of emigres who backed the island's independence movement. He died in 2005.
Those early immigrants' traditions heavily influenced Sanchez, Frank said. The colorful painted woodcuts on display in Havana through March 23 show men dancing and workers rolling tobacco as well as neighbors chatting and strolling through early 20th-century Key West. One work also shows the Key West home where Ernest Hemingway lived for a time.
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