Cuban Paintings to Tour Venezuela

Pinar del Rio, Cuba, Nov 22. -Full of Cuban colors, the exhibition La Voz de los Vientos (The Voice of the Winds) will tour several Venezuelan states as a traveling exhibit, prior to a likely tour of other Latin American countries, their author announced on Monday.In remarks to Prensa Latina, painter Dausell Valdes said that the exhibition, inaugurated on Nov. 1st at the Caracas-based Fine Arts Museum, will be shown in Zulia, Maracay and other Venezuelan regions.

"We are also planning to take the collection to Ecuador and Mexico," he said.

The selection includes 57 works of small, medium and large format using different techniques and formats such as acrylic and oil on canvass, drawings and sketches.

The Voice of the Winds consists of a series of portraits inspired by personalities of universal culture like Charles Chaplin, Cuban National Hero Jose Marti and legendary ballerina Alicia Alonso, as well as Simon Bolivar, the Liberator, and Argentine-Cuban guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara.

With an undoubted influence of nature, Valdes's works go beyond landscape painting to get into philosophical concepts and incite to reflection and controversy.

Described by critics as an orgy of the senses, with nature as a story line, the exhibition brought Pinar del Rio steep sided limestone hills, called mogotes, to Venezuela, thanks to Valdes's paintbrushes.

"I use the symbols of the flora and stone formations not only as a motif, but as an effective means or instrument to express my ideas," he said.

The exhibit tries to summarize little over a decade of creation, as mere gazes to a more extensive work full of references to Cuba and views of human beings with their dreams and aspirations. (Prensa Latina)