José María Mijares

JOSÉ MARÍA MIJARES (Havana, 1921-2004).
Untitled.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed.
It presents light damages in the margins.
Measurements: 41 x 29 cm; 72 x 60 cm (frame).

Mijares' artistic production went through different stages, one of the most interesting being his incursion into a post-cubism revisited from an intermediate place between figuration and abstraction. In the painting shown here, the author endows his synthetic vision of forms and landscapes with exceptional color. The work offers a new vitalistic aesthetic that merges with a technique close to geometric abstraction of playful character and endowed with a great power of evocation.

Mijares studied at the San Alejandro National School of Fine Arts in Havana, where he taught. He was a member of the group Diez Pintores Concretos. Between 1968 and 1973 he was a member of the Gala Group in Miami, where he settled at the age of 47. He directed the magazine Alacrán Azul in Miami. He held his first exhibition at the Havana Lyceum (1947). In the eighties he exhibited in Coral Gables, Florida, where he reiterated his presence. In 1994 the Cuban Museum of Art and Culture of Miami dedicated a retrospective to him. Also the Alfredo Martinez Gallery of Coral Gables would organize an ontological one in 1996. As for group exhibitions, it is worth mentioning his participation in the Venice Biennial of 1952. He is represented at the Cintas Foundation in New York, the Lowe Art Museum, Florida; the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mijares' well-deserved recognition came above all for knowing how to harmonize his universal vocation with the search for an autochthonous Cuban language. In this composition, he starts from a colorist postcubism through which he practically enters abstraction, but without losing the referential thread. A preened female figure is still recognizable, as in his "habaneras", but she has been stripped of personal features, transforming her body into a set of gears that animate a beautiful and elegant automaton.