Cundo Bermudez

CUNDO BERMÚDEZ (Havana, Cuba, 1914- Florida, USA, 2008).
Untitled.
Oil on canvas.
Attached certificate of authenticity issued by Don Conrado Basulto.
No stretcher frame.
Signed in the upper right area.
Measurements: 55 x 45 cm (drawing); 60.5 x 50 cm (canvas).
The painting inspired in stained glass windows was common in Cuban painting, an example of it is the present work that stands out for its brilliantly simple compositions, in which the synthetic cubism and the stained glass windows of the colonial epoch melt together. Bermúdez magnified the stained glass into a dreamlike theater where languid musicians and ornate women inhabit kaleidoscopic chessboards. The atmosphere of glassy sensuality in Bermudez's paintings is ambiguous. Ennui folds into inhaled luxury, pleasure gels in the amber of a dreamy image. Don Conrado Basulto, Cuban artist, left his country for the United States in 1994. Upon his entry into America, he was detained in Guantanamo, where he met Cundo Bermudez and founded a gallery.
Secundino Bermúdez y Delgado, known as Cundo Bermúdez, was a Cuban painter who in 1926 Bermúdez entered the Instituto de La Habana and in 1930 the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro in the same city, where he studied painting for two years. Together with other painters and as a protest against the absence of art galleries, Bermudez exhibited his works in the trees of Albear Park and also participated in an exhibition held at the Castillo de la Fuerza in 1938. It was there that he achieved certain recognition. Later he traveled to Mexico to study at the San Carlos Academy, where he was able to observe closely the work of the muralists that caused a great impression on the painter. Years later he travels to the Dominican Republic where he sells his first painting and also holds his first individual exhibition. In 1943, "An Exhibition of Modern Cuban Painting and Sculpture" is inaugurated, organized by José Gómez Sicre at the Institución Hispano Cubana de Cultura in Havana. The Mexican David Alfaro Siqueiros attends and says of Bermudez the following: "Cundo Bermudez represents audacity in the plastic arts. He knows how to build in a synchronized way. With tones and close-ups placed in pictorial depth, in contrast, he builds and organizes, sometimes in an almost miraculous way. I believe that this artist has had great importance in the chromatic range of modern Cuban painting". A year later, the Cuban Painting Exhibition was inaugurated at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA), which was a great impulse for his work, and he exhibited in San Francisco, Buenos Aires and Mexico. In 1949, he founded, among others, the Association of Painters and Sculptors of Cuba (APEC). He exhibited in several countries of America and Europe. His works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 1951 and in Munich in 1952. Four years later, in 1956, he exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennial and won first prize at the "International Caribbean Art Exhibition" at the Museum of Art in Houston, Texas. When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, Cundo participated in efforts to free political prisoners. In Cuba, like other artists, he is subjected to irrational isolation. Journalists and intellectuals visiting the island ask about him. He is denied materials to work with. He is not invited to national exhibitions. At the end of the 1960s, he managed to leave Cuba for the United States.