The Miami Dade College, Walfson Campus, Department of Arts and Philosophy in 2005 presented a major retrospective art show of the late, great Cuban artist Ernesto Briel.
With the contribution of a very capable curatorial-work from Gustavo Valdés, the skilled staff under Jorge Gutiérrez, AGS' executive direction, and the collaboration from several collectors; this show was an absolute hit.
Among all Cuban artists arriving to USA in 1980 by the Mariel boat-event, Ernesto Briel was a truly well established artist, even with some of his art-work hanging on the Bellas Artes Museum of Havana' permanent collection.
Living and working for 22 years of my life next to the energy that he once was, certainly made a completion of what my understanding of art in general, is today.
How come a figurative artist-kind of story teller-like my self, can be related to an strictly geometric artist like Briel? It is very simple: The power of modern art is in its basics.
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When Pablo Piasso gave us "his" Cubism in the early years of our XX century. He was proposing us an envisioning of art, in a different way of what we were accustomed.
Two decades before his "Mademoiselle d'Avignon" in 1886; photography came about with the irrefutable "prototype" of what we all were capable "to see-more or less".
Also the 24 by seconds "fragments of time" brought by the cinema, was a 'copy-cat" of what (we) artists were doing for centuries: "Frozen moments of time".
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What makes Picasso so great was the ability of synthesizing and idea he digested from Paul Cezanne.
As per Picasso every subject in reality can be brought to it's geometric basic shape, and also the angle from where this subject is observed can be altered.
This was a great open window to the future of understanding art far beyond its figurative meaning.
Artist as Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian and few other were the pioneers creators of what we know as Geometric Art today.
Excellent. Should be repeated with Spanish texts.
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