I, like any painter, have a world that flows from childhood. A world that tightens and commands. This world, in my case, is Cuba. It is its landscape and cities which are still colonial. It is the great coloring of its popular celebrations. It is its women. It is its insistent saints that assure an I- don't- know- what of ancestral courage in our Island. It is the extraordinary male issue of our people through our successive history. And it is also the dominion of its vegetation under a shining sun. All these feelings are present when I paint a canvas...

René Portocarrero was born and grew up in the neighborhood of El Cerro, Havana, on February 24, 1912, a significant date for our nation. The day he was born there was a carnival, so then he wanted his aunts to disguise him as an Arabian sheik, a sultan from the tale A thousand and one nights or a simple Punch on his birthdays. This artisan of Floras and Fans nurtured himself from that color and fantasy... When he was 12 years old he attended courses at the academies Villate and San Alejandro for a short time; however, he did not get accustomed to the routine and continued on his eagerness of being a painter, but in a self-taught way. At age 22 he made his first solo exhibition at the Lyceum. Four years later he joined as professor the Paintings and Sculptures Free Studies directed by Eduardo Abela, and from 1941-1943 he taught Drawing at the jail of Havana, as a way of living.

About the modus vivendi of the artists during the republic, the art critic Joaquín Texidor expressed about Portocarrero: Great painter, prestigious man because of his extensive and high-quality work, he has had and has to make leaps to live and work. With a bullet-proof dignity, Portocarrero has miraculously been able to carry out one of the most productive tasks that a man has imposed himself over and above the desperate situation of his existence. How does he work? Terrible answer we need. It seems magic or a thing of chance... In spite of the appearances the reality of our artists can make devil’s hair stand on end…

Portocarrero had his own way of applying color, totally unrelated from the academical dogmas. He said many times that he painted every day; thereof his unrepeatable technique and grace. Or like the Guatemalan Luis Cardosa y Aragón pointed out: There is so much wisdom in his naivety, so much knowledge in his freedom that his earth and sky appear through the slightest and untidiest line made by his essential paintbrushes.

With his Retratos de Flora (Portraits of Flora), the teacher gives a beautiful sample of his art to great public. His Floras can be appreciated by the humblest worker through calendars, posters, postcards... People can appreciate his stained-glass windows in Lenin Amusement Park, as well as his genius is living through the ceramic splendid mural that decorates the lobby of the Palacio de la Revolución. Dozens of solo exhibitions and more than sixty collective ones in Cuba and abroad, he won important Sambra Award to the best collection presented during the VII Biennial of Sao Paulo and many other prizes endorse this great universal and Cuban painter. He died on April 7, 1985. Nowadays René Portocarrero's work is present in important private collections and in permanent collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Havana, Modern Art Museum of New York, Modern Art Museum of Paris, Fine Arts Palace of Mexico, National Museum of Art of Warsaw, etc…

Taken from an article by Leonardo Depestre Catony, www.musica.cult.cu

About Benny Moré

El Benny, born in Santa Isabel de las Lajas (1919), had a humble beginning in music. He was seen in his town singing accompanied by a guitar or in different groups. He settled up in Havana looking for better life conditions until he was “discovered” by Siro Rodríguez, member of Trío Matamoros, who needed a singer to enlarge his group. He performed in Mexico with Matamoros and then with Pérez Prado achieving great successes and learning orchestration resources empirically because he knew nothing about music.

When he returned to Cuba he was linked to Mercerón y sus muchachos Orchestra creating his own style. Later he joined an orchestra in which he was able to gather the main and most important authors and musicians with whom he met together every day to select the songs and in this way he achieved the desired result.

Since childhood he contributed with the different musical manifestations in his hometown that approached him to African rhythms, montunos or old son chorus, quatrain and singing duel.

His performance in a band (jazzband) with Cuban percussion, singing boleros with an excellent interpretation of feeling, like Oh, vida, bolero by Yánez and Gómez and some other genres like guaracha, mambo and son montuno with a singular style, playing skillfully with the rhythm, made him become one of our best popular signers. Benny Moré died in Havana (1963). He recorded many albums in Cuba and Mexico, and there are still some recordings of his radio and TV programs.

Article by Doctor María Teresa Linares published at La Jiribilla.

VII Exhibition of New Filmmakers    

The VII Exhibition of New Filmmakers will be held at the end of February with some changes because the films will be shown also in other provinces out of Havana with spaces for debate.

Jorge Luis Sánchez, outstanding film director and president of the event, expressed in the Cuban capital that the Exhibition is open to make people think, it ventures with youngsters, it is the place to see what they are doing without tension.

The films made by these new producers will be shown from 26 February 26 to March 2nd at Chaplin, 23 y 12, Multisala Infanta, Titón movies and Fresa y Chocolate Cultural Center from the Cuban Institute of Cinematographical Art and Industry (ICAIC).

(…) This edition will be dedicated to outstanding Cuban filmmaker Santiago Álvarez and there it will be shown some documentaries and Noticiero ICAIC.

It will be made also a photographic exhibition Lo extraordinario de la realidad, and Santiago’s son, Victor Álvarez, proposes a conversation in which he will anticipate some unpublished fragments of a book about his father he is preparing.


From an article by Zorky Crespo Orozco from Radio Musical Nacional.

Manolito Simonet

Manuel Perfecto Simonet, Manolito Simonet for all Cuban. Was born in Camagüey on April 18, 1961. Pianist, keyboard player, arranger and composer. Thanks to his experience in Maravillas de Florida Orchestra he was able to create a new group on February 1993, presenting a Cuban music project based on pure roots but with contemporary tones and harmony at the same time and well elaborated texts about different topics, most of them by his own. He has been well received by his public since the first album and he has made it big with theme songs like: Todavía no, Marcando la Distancia, El Águila, Papirriqui con Guaniquiqui, María Luisa and La Parranda, among others.

In 1994 he won New Orchestra Prize; with a solid background and a great talent, Manolito decides to strengthen his new Trabuco by adding trombones, trumpets and percussion instruments stamping his particular mark with a heavy and strong, but at the same time refined, sound. Despite his short career, he has recorded 4 CDs which have been well received.

During all these years they have performed successfully in many stages throughout the island and abroad such as: Italy, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Great Britain, Belgium, United States, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Martinique, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, and Sweden. Manolito works genres like son, bolero, cha-cha-chá, danzon, timba, guaracha, cumbia, ballenato and some other Caribbean and Cuban rhythms. He has also composed music for films and has won awards and distinctions for his work during all these years.