Upcoming Exhibitions

Brazilian artist Mariana Palma represents a powerful and promising generation of women who are conquering an ever-increasing space in contemporary art. In a poetic way, she subtly evokes nature in a way that is as beautiful as it is unique. 

To house his solo show at MON, the iconic Eye was chosen as the main exhibition space, which will certainly make the visitor's experience even more intense and interesting. 

Upon entering the immersion proposed by the artist, the public will encounter not only works of art, but also the possibility of perceiving new meanings. Her work, with its lightness and sophistication, involves the viewer.

The exhibition "Through" evokes the idea of crossing layers, fabrics, images or time. Her works flow, they carry movement. It's a crossing that doesn't hurt, but reveals. The feminine gaze and sensitivity are present at all times.

Each exhibition held by MON in the Eye space is unique. What the public sees is always the sum of the talent of a great artist with a unique and dazzling exhibition space, considered in itself a work of art, designed by the master Oscar Niemeyer.

Over more than two decades, several important exhibitions have been held there. However, each of them takes on a unique character, with a lot of drama and strength, as is the case now with Mariana Palma.

Grandiose, the exhibition goes beyond the confines of the Eye and invades other spaces in the Museum, such as the staircases and the rooms of the Tower, proposing an even greater challenge. The artist invites visitors to immerse themselves in her work. Enjoy.

Juliana Vellozo Almeida Vosnika
CEO of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum

After her participation in the exhibition "Afinidades II - Elas!" at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON) in 2022 and 2023, and her installation "Transparências" on the trees in the Museum's gardens as part of the "MON sem Paredes" project, Mariana Palma returns with a solo exhibition at the Eye. It's like a mini-retrospective, in which the public will be able to discover 19 canvases covering the years 2008 to 2025 and two large installations: "Fluir", in the Eye, and another (untitled), on the stairs of the tower. Finally, a series of five projections in one of the rooms of the tower leading to the Eye will show a final angle of a complex work, whose central theme is nature, which invites the public to cross over, to mentally go to the other side of existence to meet (their) dream.

"The title of the exhibition, 'Through', has to do with this idea of crossing - layers, fabrics, images, time. It's a word that carries movement and a certain lightness, a crossing that doesn't hurt, but reveals. I think she synthesizes well this game between what is seen and what is insinuated in my works," says Mariana Palma. 

The title "Através" also evokes the passage through the looking glass, as imagined by Lewis Carroll in his famous novel "Alice in Wonderland". In this MON exhibition, the mirrors are the 'transparencies' of the works - it can be interpreted as a metaphor for self-discovery and confrontation with the unconscious. It is an exploration of the passage from a rational world to a more absurd and illogical one, where the usual rules are inverted and man could - perhaps - free himself from reality. Mariana Palma confronts us with Einstein's relativity, in which time and space no longer offer fixed points of reference. What remains stable? Just "the thread of my thoughts". Mariana invites us to penetrate the meanders of Alice's consciousness, in other words, "somewhere between my memory and my imagination". His compositions, whether in his paintings, his photographic installations on veils or his projections, are made up of recognizable themes, but put together in this way, they create a new world that stimulates the imagination.

Mariana is one of the great artists who have explored transparency in their work. Among these artists is Francis Picabia, known for his "transparencies" of the 1920s, superimposed images inspired by ancient painting. In 2016-2017, with "L'observatoire de la lumière", through a play of colors, projections, reflections, transparencies and contrasts, both internal and external, Daniel Buren showed Frank Gehry's Vuitton Foundation building in Paris in a new light. Mariana uses the images with which she has been composing for many years, leaves and flowers of all ages, elements pushed by the tides, fabrics and tiles that she superimposes. Although perspective is not her theme, the space of her works remains profound. As the different images she stages, which slide over each other, have no apparent connection or logic, their encounter raises enigmas that we try to solve. Automatism of the unconscious? Applying the poetic principle of rhyme to visual forms? Mariana's "Transparencies", made up of intersecting figures, are an illustration of this approach to mental mechanics with the effect of memory and wear and tear. They are imbroglios of pirated images with a botticelliangrace.

Mariana Palma's "Transparencies" series communicates the sensation that the artist creates on her canvases. In an installation presented in a group of trees in front of the MON entrance for the "MON without Walls" project in 2022 and today on the stairs of the Museum tower, the viewer is invited to participate and see themselves in the midst of the scenes produced. In addition to the juxtapositions achieved through composition and the distance between the fabrics, the audience becomes another element of the work. The path created by and between the fabrics opens up paths and invitations to access new perceptions and visions of the same work, which blends in with the viewer and the space. 

In the "waterfall" (the artist didn't actually name the installation) that cascades down the floors of the Eye tower, in the central space of the staircase, there is a cataract of still lifes that parade from top to bottom, creating vertigo and contributing to the overall mystery of this exhibition. To further confuse the issue, the artist extinguished all the colors to keep only blue, turning this series into a vertical flow that seems to suck up the entire history of art and, without a doubt, as a poetic and harsh wink to the effects of climate change.

On the central theme of her work, the artist confides: "Nature has always been very central to my work, right from the start. Even when I wasn't directly painting flowers or natural elements, there was a relationship with the organic, with growth, with the body as landscape. But it was in the 2000s, with the watercolors, that this presence of nature intensified. Then, in more recent photographs and paintings, it came through even more strongly - but no longer as a literal representation, but as poetic matter. Dried leaves, fruits, animals, lichens, dust, everything comes in as a repertoire that speaks of life and death, of transformation". 

"Fluir", the centerpiece of the exhibition 

"The work 'Fluir' has a very special place in this exhibition. It was a turning point, almost a dress rehearsal for what was to come. In it, I place two overlapping fabrics in front of a box with water and mirrors, which forms a kind of perpendicular light box - a cinema inside out - creating an image from the reflection of the sparkle, which is always moving. It's as if it's breathing, and the light that emanates from her takes over the entire vault of the Museum, guiding the exhibition.

She ended up becoming the center of the exhibition, not just physically, but conceptually as well. From there, I organized the other works as developments - some quieter, others more intense, all in dialogue with this idea of image as apparition. I thought of each section of the show as a sensory environment, which the visitor passes through - as the title already suggests. Everything reveals itself little by little, like diving into a fabric and finding other layers, other landscapes," explains Mariana Palma. 

With a strong reference to vanitas, a style of painting produced between the 16th and 17th centuries in which the compositions sought to prove the transience of life, mixing symbols of ephemerality and death, this installation on the stairs and the 19 paintings in the Olho room explore this space of present and posthumous memory. Mariana Palma creates unique pictorial spaces, constructed by juxtaposing elements from distant families. On the large canvases in saturated colors, tiles coexist with foliage, theater curtains with flowers, printed fabrics, draped and frayed. Natural and artificial elements create unlikely hybrids. The result is unexpectedly harmonious and enigmatic compositions that, by causing a certain strangeness, invite the viewer to take the time to observe. Contemplation reveals genetic clues. The grandeur, the drama, the emotional exuberance, the vitality, the construction of movement and the use of contrasting textures and luxurious materials reveal the dialogue with the baroque painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, evoking reflections on sensuality, the ephemerality of beauty and the bombardment of images today. The use of pure colors is reminiscent of Flemish painters, while the subtle perspectival effects suggest a mastery of Renaissance lessons.

Mariana Palma revolutionized the notion of still life and the evocative power of the objects she portrays. This genre re-emerged after a millennium of eclipse, during which things were no longer portrayed for their own sake, but always at the service of religion or political power. It was at the dawn of modern capitalism that painters, particularly Flemish ones, began to depict "commodities". They made "things" the stars of their paintings, without referring to their use by characters, religious or otherwise. They regained power. The French painter Chardin established himself as a master of the genre in the 18th century, giving it its letters of nobility.

But the term remains, and its connotation masks the fact that immovable objects can easily inspire dreams, imagination, action or doubt. More than a fruit basket or a butcher's stall, objects are witnesses to times of opulence, reminders of our mortal condition. In her still lifes and vanitas, Mariana Palma adds other dimensions. The transparencies in her paintings add a virtual third dimension, which she materializes even more clearly in her floating projection or print-on-veil installations.

In a small room in the MON tower, five projections are presented. They are flowers, each one on its own, in vibrant colors, with stems practically devoid of foliage, the base of which we can't see. Are they on the ground or in a vase? We'll never know. We won't know the context either, because they stand out in the darkness. The only element that breaks the seriousness of this staging is the wind that makes them vibrate. They become almost human, both in their size and in their strong, impartial presence, each one unique. These powerful videos evoke the extremes of human emotion and the experience of consciousness. The proximity to the staircase installation can also lead us to think about birth and death, themes often present in the artist's work. Here, she expands time and explores the movements of human consciousness with a sense of the sublime that seems inspired by Renaissance painters. In an incredible feat, the almost nothingness of this "animated still life" becomes a whole, perhaps metaphorically showing us the pulse of life. We can't escape basic questions: what's going on? There will be no answer, no narrative. Mariana doesn't tell a story that can be written as a short story: she creates sequences of moving images - rather than furniture. Each one is a complete whole, like a poem or a piece of music.

What we call baroque is irregular, singular, bizarre. The artifice gains an autonomy it didn't have before. By analyzing the way in which the Baroque image was constructed, we discover not the way in which reality actually appears, but the way in which all images of things, even natural and sensory ones, are constructed as sets, according to principles that are not those of the structure of the thing represented, but those of image-making, so much so that the very world in which we live seems to dissolve into a series of images that correspond to nothing other than them. This is one of the sensations that visitors will have at the MON when they visit this exhibition that embraces the volumes of the Eye and the stairs of the tower that lead to it.

Baroque philosophy enables this knowledge of the fundamentally illusory nature of the world, thanks to which we can rationally perceive the need to seek our salvation in an act that, in turn, no longer admits of rational justification.

The baroque critique of appearances restores them to themselves. An entirely new game opens up, where these appearances produce their effects, perpetually referring to each other on their own level, without claiming the power to manifest anything beyond themselves. There are a thousand possibilities of other appearances that this baroque game of images evokes with the thousand effects that its game constantly produces. Isn't it this philosophical pleasure of knowing appearances for themselves, through the play of their construction, of their complex mutual references, that ultimately characterizes the work of the great Baroque artists?

"I was hooked on the Baroque universe from an early age - both the European and our own, from Minas Gerais. I've always been struck by this excess, this drama and, at the same time, this delicacy of detail, of light, of superimposition," Mariana adds. "My relationship with the Baroque is less like a direct reference and more like an atmosphere. I'm interested in this construction of excess, in the tension between the visible and the invisible, between the sublime and the grotesque. The Baroque taught me to think of the image as something that overflows - that doesn't contain itself. And this appears in my works in the details, the layers, the light, the volumes that insinuate themselves even in two-dimensionality".

Mariana Palma's exhibition "Através" is breathtaking. The artist has explored the most challenging spaces in Oscar Niemeyer's architecture - the Eye, the staircase and one of the lower rooms of the Eye's downward curve - to give us a master class on her vision of nature, a decidedly contemporary baroque style that will open up the widest possible space for visitors' imaginations.

The work of Brazilian contemporary artist Mariana Palma can be seen in the Eye and in the Tower's spaces in the unprecedented solo show "Através", organized by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum. Curated by Marc Pottier, the exhibition brings together large-scale fabric canvases, installations and videos, providing the public with an immersive experience, available from September 13.

Mariana has works in MON's collection and in recent years has taken part in exhibitions such as "Afinidades" and "MON sem Paredes". The show's main work, the large and surprising installation "Fluir", was developed especially for the Eye space. 

The title "Through" of the exhibition by Brazilian artist Mariana Palma evokes the passage through the looking glass, as imagined by Lewis Carroll in his famous novel "Alice in Wonderland". 

In this unprecedented exhibition, held by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, the mirrors are the works' transparencies, which can be interpreted as a metaphor for self-discovery and confrontation with the unconscious. 

It is an exploration of the passage from a rational world to a more absurd and illogical one, where the usual rules are inverted and man could - perhaps - free himself from reality. 

The artist confronts us with Einstein's relativity, in which time and space no longer offer fixed points of reference. What remains stable? Just the thread of his thoughts. Mariana invites us to penetrate the meanders of Alice's consciousness, in other words, "somewhere between my memory and my imagination". 

His compositions, whether in his paintings, his photographic installations on veils or his projections, are made up of recognizable themes, but put together in this way, they create a new world that stimulates the imagination.

The exhibition is breathtaking. The artist has explored the most challenging spaces in Oscar Niemeyer's architecture - the Eye, the staircase and the lower rooms of the Eye's downward curve - to give us a master class on her vision of nature, a decidedly contemporary baroque style that will open up the widest possible space for visitors' imaginations.

Mixed techniques on canvas
200 x 350 cm
Banco Itaú collection

Oil and acrylic paint on canvas
95 x 95 cm
Daniela e Alfredo Villela collection

Oil and acrylic paint on canvas
170 x 170 cm
Rosana e Arthur Pollis collection

A brand new exhibition by Mariana Palma is MON's new project for the Eye space

"Through" is an unprecedented solo show organized by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, which brings the work of contemporary artist Mariana Palma to the Tower's spaces and Eye. Curated by Marc Pottier, the exhibition brings together large canvases, installations and videos, allowing the public to immerse themselves in the works. The opening will take place on September 13 at noon, with free admission at that time.

"We are immensely happy to welcome Mariana Palma to the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, a beautiful opportunity for the Museum's public to immerse themselves in a rare artistic experience. His works reveal delicacy and strength at the same time, and invite us to go through layers of color, fabric and imagination," says the Secretary of State for Culture, Luciana Casagrande Pereira.

"Brazilian artist Mariana Palma represents a powerful and promising generation of women who are conquering an ever-increasing space in contemporary art. In a poetic way, she subtly evokes nature in a way that is as beautiful as it is unique," says MON's director Juliana Vosnika. 

"Upon entering the immersion proposed by the artist, the public will encounter not only works of art, but also the possibility of perceiving new meanings. His work, with its lightness and sophistication, involves the viewer," he says. "The exhibition evokes the idea of crossing, be it layers, fabrics, images or time. His works flow, they carry movement," says Juliana. 

Mariana has works in MON's collection and in recent years has taken part in exhibitions such as "Afinidades" and "MON sem Paredes". His works create unique pictorial spaces, built by juxtaposing different elements. 

Large canvases with saturated colors can be reminiscent of theater curtains with flowers and printed, draped and frayed fabrics. Photographs mixed with paintings and large-scale embroidery create a contemporary still life made up of living and decaying elements, elements of classical painting and objects considered residual, mixing the noble and the residual. 

The main work in this exhibition, "Fluir", was developed especially for the Eye space. It's a large installation using fabrics, water, broken mirrors and special lighting. The aim was to create the illusion of a large waterfall invading the room.

The Tower's stairwell has been given a large installation of fabrics printed with images. In the Araucária Space, under the Eye, the public will find videos with high-definition projections of images of flowers that permeate all of the artist's work.

"The work 'Fluir' ended up becoming the centerpiece of the exhibition, not only physically, but conceptually as well," explains Mariana. "From there, I organized the other works as offshoots - some quieter, others more intense, all in dialogue with this idea of image as apparition. Everything reveals itself little by little, like diving into a fabric and finding other layers, other landscapes," she says. 

The curator says that the title "Through" evokes the passage through the looking glass, as imagined by Lewis Carroll in his famous novel "Alice in Wonderland". "In this MON exhibition, the mirrors are the works' transparencies, which can be interpreted as a metaphor for self-discovery and confrontation with the unconscious," says Marc Pottier. "It's an exploration of the passage from a rational world to a more absurd and illogical one, where the usual rules are inverted and man could perhaps free himself from reality," he comments.

Born in São Paulo in 1979, she began her bachelor's degree in fine arts in 1998 at the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP), completing it in 2000. The artist has had solo exhibitions in Florianópolis, Recife, Curitiba, Ribeirão Preto and various art galleries. In 2006 she took part in seven group exhibitions, including Rumos Artes Visuais. In previous years, her works have been shown in 21 group exhibitions.

She has received several awards, such as the Solo Exhibition Award from SESC Ribeirão Preto in 2003 and the Acquisition Awards from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Campinas, the Ribeirão Preto Art Museum and Casa do Olhar in Santo André in 2003, 2005 and 2006, respectively. She has participated in projects with Albano Alfonso, Sandra Cinto and Eduardo Brandão, among other artists. She is an artist who dialogues with the world of color in her work and becomes numb to it, with a great wealth of detail. Based on the construction of pictorial spaces, he works with the juxtaposition of diverse elements and techniques, in a desire to refine the language of painting and express his concerns.

Através - Mariana Palma

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The unprecedented exhibition held by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, "Cinema Dreams: Arte para a Sétima Arte", should inspire designers and delight cinephiles by bringing together these two artistic strands.

Movie posters are similar in most parts of the world, but in Fidel Castro's Cuba, artists had total freedom to create new images of classics from the seventh century. Encouraged to experiment with abstract, minimalist and symbolic forms, designers made illustrations as striking as the advertised films themselves.

Here we have a rich collection of these records, which, through incredible drawings, reveal peculiar ways of looking. This creative diversity was influenced by Pop Art, psychedelia and European and Oriental art.

Most of the posters were made entirely by hand, guaranteeing rich texture, intense colors and authentic features. Recognized internationally by UNESCO for their value and importance, Cuban film posters are notorious for their creativity and unquestionable graphic quality. 

For all these reasons, they areconsidered important pieces of art, not only as advertising tools, but also for their cultural relevance.

By bringing this significant exhibition to visitors, MON ratifies its mission: to collect and exhibit visual arts, architecture and design, providing transformative experiences and dialogues with the public. 

Juliana Vellozo Almeida Vosnika
CEO of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum

Cuban film posters have been recognized by Unesco and included in the "Memory of the World" register, a distinction that highlights their heritage value and cultural importance. This international recognition highlights the unique aesthetic and impact of Cuban graphic design on the world of cinema.

This inscription recognizes the artistic and cultural contribution of Cuban posters, which have accompanied Cuban cinema since its inception.

Influence on future generations: UNESCO recognition is seen as a source of inspiration for young creators and designers, who can be inspired by the ingenuity and graphic quality of these works.

Importance of digitization and preservation: the "Memory of the World" inscription also highlighted the need to digitize and preserve these posters for future generations.

Unesco, as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, plays a key role in promoting international cooperation and safeguarding world heritage.

Eduardo Muñoz Bachs was born in 1937 in Valencia, Spain.
​His parents, who fought against fascism, fled Spain and Europe after Franco and Hitler's victories. They settled in Cuba in 1941.
Since childhood, Eduardo has been interested in drawing.
​In 1952, he began as an apprentice artist at the CMQ-TV radio and TV network. In 1957, he worked on animated films for an advertising agency. He joined ICAIC in 1959, in the animation department, and in 1960 he created the institution's first poster, for the movie Historias de la Revolución. In 1961, he moved to the poster department. In the following years, he also worked for other government agencies. In 1970, he designed the cover of Cuba Magazine.
​Bachs was not only a prolific movie poster designer - he also wrote and illustrated numerous children's books and created record covers.
​In the 1980s, he collaborated with magazines such as El Muñe, Cómicos, Bohemia, Prisma and Revolución y Cultura.
​His movie posters have a very personal stamp, breaking with traditional graphic codes. He created his own style, full of color and comic naivety. He is Cuba's most prolific poster artist and is considered one of Cuba's greatest graphic artists. He died in 2001 in Havana.

René Azcuy Cárdenas was born in Havana in 1939. At the age of 16, he began his artistic studies at the National School of Fine Arts in San Alejandro and then at the Higher School of Arts and Crafts in Havana. He began his career as an illustrator in advertising agencies.
​In 1963, one of the founders of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC) invited him to join the team of graphic designers, entrusting him with the creation of advertisements and press releases for the national film distributor. He quickly went on to create movie posters and political propaganda.
​His first posters used colored illustrations, but in 1970 he found his characteristic graphic style, which earned him the nickname "Negro Azcuy" because he worked almost exclusively in black and white. He used photographs from magazines, cut out in close-up and with strong contrast.
​In 1983, he joined the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), linked to the Ministry of Culture, and participated in the drafting of Law 106 for the social improvement of Cuban artists, enacted in 1988.
​In 1992, he moved to Mexico, where he dedicated himself exclusively to teaching at the Universidad Benemérita de Puebla before reuniting with his family in Miami, where he passed away in 2019.

He was born in Placetas, Villa Clara, Cuba, on April 12, 1943.
​He began his career at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC).
​In the 1970s, at the height of the Cuban Revolution, a new type of communicator emerged: the graphic designer. The art of the poster, with its use of color, collages, contrasted photographs, blunt texts and slogans, has become an essential means of communication.
​Mesa helped make the movie poster an innovative form of expression, breaking with traditional advertising styles. His work has been exhibited all over the world and is studied by art students at various universities in Latin America.
​In the 1950s, he studied commercial and architectural painting at the Garcés Academy in Havana. Between 1960 and 1962, he attended the National School of Art Teachers and, from 1963 to 1966, he studied at the San Alejandro National School of Plastic Arts. He majored in graphic design at the School of Design and, between 1975 and 1976, studied Art History at the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of Havana.
​He has worked mainly with set design, graphic design and painting.
​Between 1962 and 1969, he was a set designer at the ICAIC. From 1969 to 1991, he was art director of the magazine Cine Cubano.
​Between 1986 and 1991, he worked as a designer at the Domingo Ravenet Art Gallery. In 1990, he became a member of UNEAC.
​He lived and worked for a time in Spain and since 1991 has lived in Austin, Texas (USA).

Born in 1941 and naturalized Mexican in 2003, he grew up in Cuba. He graduated in Art History from the University of Havana and began his career in 1957 at an advertising agency.
​He soon went on to create political posters for revolutionary campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s.
​In 1968, he joined the ICAIC, where he created one of his most iconic posters - one of the few to use photography - with the famous portrait of Che Guevara by Alberto Korda, multiplying Che's image against the red background of the revolution.
​That same year, he also produced posters for Cuban and foreign films as an independent artist.
​In the early 1970s, he officially joined ICAIC's team of designers.
​With a unique and apparently simple style, ñiko has taught graphic design at universities in Cuba, Spain and Mexico from the 1970s to the present day.
​With the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, Cuba faced a serious economic and social crisis, and the production of public posters virtually ceased.
​To continue his practice, he accepted an invitation to teach at the University of Veracruz in Mexico and left Cuba for good.

He is a member of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA) and has held the Cuban National Culture Award since 1983. In 2018, his works were declared Cultural Heritage of the Cuban Nation.
​He is also a member of the National System of Art Creators of FONCA (Mexico). In 2021, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Veracruz.
​He currently lives and works in Zoncuantla, Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico.
​According to ñiko, a poster is a whisper, not a shout - it should convince, seduce and catch the eye.
​For him, the poster is demonstrative, suggestive, reflective and also a form of entertainment: "The poster must, above all, communicate the artist's personal passion. He anticipates and perpetuates the images of his time; he creates and participates in history".
He says that if there is a secret in the poster, it lies in the ideas, in the communication, even before the aesthetic process:
"Although beauty is also a means of achieving and affirming what we have to say."

Sign your posters with your full name: Servando Cabrera Moreno

Servando was, above all, a painter.
​He graduated from the San Alejandro Academy and also studied at the Art Student's League in New York and La Grande Chaumière in Paris. He exhibited for the first time at the Lyceum in Havana in 1943 and took part in various biennials in Venice, Mexico and São Paulo, as well as several group exhibitions.
​He has won numerous awards and his works are in museums, galleries and private collections all over the world.
​He was a close friend of Alfredo Guevara (founder of ICAIC and the Havana Latin American Film Festival), with whom he became even closer after meeting in Paris. They worked together on the documentary El Mégano (1954), together with filmmakers influenced by Italian neorealism.
​In 1979, Guevara commissioned Servando to design the poster for the Cuban film Retrato de Teresa, by Pastor Vega.
​As a tribute to Servando, the poster for the 35th edition of the Latin American Film Festival featured his work "Moncada" and "Cordillera", two of his most expressive paintings, exhibited on the ninth floor of the ICAIC, as designed by Guevara.
​During the so-called "gray period" of the 1970s - marked by repression of homosexuality and cultural experimentalism - Guevara was an important supporter of Servando.

Antonio Fernández Reboiro was born in Cuba in 1935 to Spanish immigrants. He studied medicine for six years before turning to architecture and design at the University of Havana.
​He began his career at the magazine Havana Picture Guide and collaborated with architect Ricardo Porro on the construction of Cuba's National Art School.
​In 1963, he was hired by ICAIC's artistic director, who was putting together a new team of designers.
​For two decades, he produced countless posters. The ICAIC offered artists a space of creative freedom, and Reboiro developed a visual imagination influenced by Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Op Art, Pop Art and psychedelia. His posters often distanced themselves from the content of the films, functioning as visual enigmas with symbolic, abstract, figurative or surrealist elements.
​Its main characteristic was the explosive and artistic use of bright, vivid colors.
​Persecuted for his homosexuality, he went into exile in 1982 during an exhibition at the Cannes Film Festival. He lived in France and then Spain, where he continued his career creating posters and visual identities for theaters, operas, ballets and festivals.
​In 1998, he set up his graphics studio in Miami. In the 2010s, he devoted himself entirely to painting.
​He passed away in 2020.
​His works are in the collections of museums such as the MoMA (New York), the Museum of Advertising and the Pompidou Center (Paris), the National Gallery (London), the Poster Museum (Warsaw), the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami, the Museo Carlos Maside (Spain) and many others around the world.

Azcuy, Bachs, Cabrera Moreno, Julioeloy, Ñiko, Reboiro

The exhibition " Sonhos de Cinema: Arte para a Sétima Arte" presents a selection of 75 posters created by renowned Cuban graphic artists. Curated by Jean-François Couvreur with assistant curatorship by Jhon Voese, the exhibition organized by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum can be seen in Room 11 as from September 13.

Most of the posters were made entirely by hand, guaranteeing rich texture, intense colors and authentic features. Created by artists such as René Azcuy Cárdenas, Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Antonio Pérez González (Ñiko) and Antonio Fernández Reboiro, the pieces take you on a journey through Cuban graphic design from the 1960s and 1970s.

Before the 1960s, Cuban posters were essentially commercial and influenced by the United States. However, after Fidel Castro came to power, it became a political and cultural instrument. In March 1959, after the revolution, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) was created. This cultural organization played a central role in the production of film posters, inspiring the creation of original works signed by their authors and giving rise to a unique style and a distinctive graphic school. The cultural posters were mostly dedicated to cinema and documentaries, which Fidel Castro considered essential tools for educating the Cuban people.

Under Castro's leadership, Cuban designers enjoyed total freedom, freeing themselves from the American model, which focused on the name of the film, the main actors and a scene from the film, a model still used in many countries. This freedom allowed Cuban designers to reinterpret the films independently and go beyond traditional graphic codes. Influenced by modernist movements, they were inspired by Pop Art, kinetic art, surrealist collage and psychedelia. American graphic design, especially comics, magazine covers and artists such as Saul Bass and Andy Warhol, also left their mark.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Cuba imported many Western films, mainly European. Cuban designers adopted screen printing, which has become a feature of Cuban graphic culture. This process, similar to artistic screen printing, involved the use of stencils between the ink and the support. Each artist conceived the design, created their colors and produced the poster, which strongly influenced the style of the posters. Technical restrictions, such as the size of the print, and the limitation of volumes to large areas of bright colors with sharp outlines also shaped the graphic style of Cuban posters.

Author: Reboiro
Silkscreen
75 x 52 cm
Collection of Jean-François Couvreur

El Discreto Encanto De La Burguesia, undated

Author: Ñiko
Silkscreen
75 x 52 cm
Collection of Jean-François Couvreur

Author: Azcuy
Silkscreen
75 x 52 cm
Collection of Jean-François Couvreur

MON holds exhibition of Cuban movie poster designs 

The unprecedented exhibition held by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, "Cinema Dreams: Art for Seventh Art", presents a selection of 75 iconic posters created by renowned Cuban graphic artists. Curated by Jean-François Couvreur and assistant curated by Jhon Voese, the exhibition will open in Room 11 on September 13 at noon, with free admission at that time.

"Cuban posters are true works of art that tell stories beyond cinema. We hope that this exhibition will bring MON's audience closer to innovative graphic production, marked by creative freedom and dialog between cultures," says the Secretary of State for Culture, Luciana Casagrande Pereira.

"The exhibition should inspire designers and delight cinephiles by bringing together these two artistic strands," says MON's director Juliana Vosnika. "Movie posters are similar in most parts of the world, but in Fidel Castro's Cuba, artists had total freedom to create unpublished images of classics of the seventh art," he says.

"We have here a rich collection of these records, which, through incredible drawings, reveal peculiar ways of looking. This creative diversity was influenced by Pop Art, psychedelia and European and Oriental art," says Juliana.

Created by artists such as René Azcuy Cárdenas, Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Antonio Pérez González (Ñiko) and Antonio Fernández Reboiro, the posters take you on a journey through Cuban graphic design in the 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the influence of cinema and political culture in Latin America. The pieces are original, many signed by the authors. Printed in silkscreen, some posters are in black and white and others in polychrome. 

The exhibition not only highlights Cuba's rich artistic tradition, but also connects the public to cultural practices that transcend borders, establishing a link between graphic design and the historical narratives of Latin America. This show ratifies MON's vocation to promote exhibitions that establish dialogues between art and design.

According to the curator, in the 1960s and 1970s Cuba imported many Western films, mainly European. "Cuban designers have adopted screen printing, which has become a feature of that country's graphic culture. This process, similar to artistic screen printing, involved the use of stencils between the ink and the support. Each artist conceived the design, created their colors and produced the poster, which strongly influenced the style of the posters," says Jean-François Couvreur.

The exhibition " Sonhos de Cinema: Arte para a Sétima Arte" presents a selection of 75 posters created by renowned Cuban graphic artists. Curated by Jean-François Couvreur with assistant curatorship by Jhon Voese, the exhibition organized by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum can be seen in Room 11 as from September 13.
Most of the posters were made entirely by hand, guaranteeing rich texture, intense colors and authentic features. Created by artists such as René Azcuy Cárdenas, Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Antonio Pérez González (Ñiko) and Antonio Fernández Reboiro, the pieces take you on a journey through Cuban graphic design from the 1960s and 1970s.

Cinema Dreams: Art for the Seventh Art

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