| |
|
The Ghosts of Habana By: Fabiola Santiago
The Miami Herald September 5, 2002
Posted on Thu, Sep. 05, 2002 in The Miami Herald.
The Ghosts of Havana
By Fabiola Santiago.
Fsantiago@herald.com.
It's easy to love the lady, gray and ghostly as she appears these days. La Habana is an enchantress, seductive like poetry, meaningful like history. She packs plenty of both, sliding under your skin, clutching the heart, inspiring, as only an old, dramatic city can do.
Havana.
She need not be yours to claim.
''I was seduced. I fell in love,'' says Ismael Gómez Peralta, a painter born in the small town of Batabanó, which is some 60 kilometers away but might as well be on another island for a young artist with large dreams but no transportation.
Only dreams and cities are a powerful combination. Gómez Peralta rose at dawn to catch the first bus to study in the city's prestigious San Alejandro Academy, came back to town with nightfall. Some evenings he hid and slept in a classroom. Without enough money to eat, he smoked a cheap cigar. Always, he walked the city, saw it in the fog of hunger, through the cloudy lens of the high of a brandless stogie, the only kind Cubans can afford to smoke.
Now 34 and in Miami to show his work, Gómez Peralta came of age as a man and artist in the shadows of this, his adopted city, photographing, then painting his obsession --not with the people, but with the buildings.
El Alaska at 23 and M streets. The flat buildings with the Roman columns at 10 de Octubre and Milagro streets. Hotel Trocha and its arched windows, the scaffolds embracing all of the city like a chain-link fence. And oh, to watch El Alaska prophetically come down just last week, as Gómez Peralta hung his creation on canvas from the distant shore of a city of exiles.
''I've tried to capture the state of mind of Havana -- and it's gray, a dead-end, a lot of sadness,'' Gómez Peralta says.
He pauses and adds: "But always with a ray of hope, a light that illuminates even if it's just a little.''
PROVOCATIVE SHOW
He lives on the island, but he's here to stage a provocative show of his series Réquiem por La Habana/Requiem for Havana, a collection of oils and collages that capture in gloomy, ghostly images the neglected buildings of Havana, historical treasures in danger of being lost to decay. To match the work, the artist is asking patrons to come to Friday's opening night at Cernuda Arte in Coral Gables dressed in mournful black.
''I'm always inside the city, looking at it, observing it,'' Gómez Peralta says. "Mine is a critical view of what's happening with the city, but it's also almost a romantic image. The buildings seduce me, and I receive signals. The destruction provokes feelings inside of me. I form an alliance with the buildings, and in that introspection, the paintings take shape. There is an energy between the buildings and me.''
In the Calle San Lázaro painting, 'the light that falls at five o' clock in the afternoon'' casts the brusque lines that shape the building. In all the paintings, even the air seems charged.
Many of his works are inspired by Cuban literature. Gómez Peralta quotes a Virgilio Piñera poem, La isla en peso (The Weight of the Island): "La maldita circunstancia del agua por todas partes . . .''
The curse of water, everywhere.
You see ''the curse'' in the painting Un Día Después (One Day After), in which the building looks like a ship in high seas. You see ''the curse'' in the sky -- is it rain or tears? -- and on the wet texture of the streets.
''There are moments in which the sky crushes you as well,'' Gómez Peralta says, speaking of the mood of Havana.
Says Cuban writer Reinaldo Montero: "The Havana that Gómez Peralta shows us does not seem to differ from the Havana shared day to day by those of us who live on the island, and it coincides with the Havana that accompanies us in both our good dreams and our bad.''
Some of his paintings are named after street corners that will ring familiar to Miamians -- La Esquina de Tejas, Ayesterán.
Well-known corners of Havana, restaurants in Miami.
''A curious thing, no?'' the artist says. "Being here has made me think about a lot of things.''
In one painting, a faint clothesline appears across a faint balcony, as ghostly as the old cars Gómez Peralta also has photographed and painted and has included in this show.
''It is the only vestige of humanity,'' he says of the clothesline.
And of the cars: "They are abandoned, rotting on a corner with no tires, but they are fighting for life. The cars are like characters . . . fossils moving through the city.''
LITTLE RECOGNITION
The clothesline, precariously perched, is not unlike his life seems at the moment. A disciple of the late Cuban painter Raúl Martínez (Gómez Peralta inherited his studio and is the curator of his work), the young artist says his work gets little recognition in Cuba.
His first series in 1993-94, ''a homage to Batabanó, an intimate look at the disappearing images of my town, to see it up close,'' was exhibited in the town's annual Cultural Week, but it didn't travel beyond the borders. His first exhibit on Havana, photo images and collages titled La Ciudad en Silencio, The City in Silence, was shown at Charles Chaplin Cinema Gallery, attracting the attention of European visitors but no Cuban press.
Then last year, while he was curating a Martínez exhibit at the Raúl Martínez Gallery inside Palacio de Segundo Cabo in Havana, the gallery's director visited Gómez Peralta at home and got to see his work. Another exhibit, Una Ciudad y Otra, One City and Another, was installed at the Raúl Martínez Gallery and the magazine Suplemento de Arte Cubano wrote about it. Miami art dealer Ramón Cernuda read the piece, asked Gómez Peralta to send five works, then called and asked him to come to Miami to stage a solo exhibit.
Gómez Peralta says he's relishing his time here, but he's eager to return to Havana soon.
''I still have a lot to do there,'' Gómez Peralta says. "I am not unfaithful to my country. I am not an enemy of my country. I have a critical position, a humanist's position, but I hope Havana will receive me well.''
Havana classmates to reunite, reminisce after 55 years
Class of 1947 to meet again
By Teresa Perez. Herald Writer.
To many Cuban exiles in South Florida, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in West Miami-Dade is more than just a place for boys to get an education -- it's like a little piece of home.
So each year, a different class of graduates from the school's namesake in Havana gathers there to celebrate the old days -- and the new.
This year, it's the Class of 1947's turn. The group will celebrate its 55th reunion Oct. 11-12. It's part of a ongoing Havana Belen tradition.
''The most difficult part is gathering and locating all the graduates. My first year organizing the reunion was achieved by chance,'' said committee organizer Oscar de Tuya, 73. "I have found [classmates] in bakeries, supermarkets. One I found crossing Flagler Street.''
Since the reunions started in Miami in 1967, 50 percent of the graduates have been found here. The others are scattered among New York, California and Latin American countries.
The reunion festivities for every class include a trip out to the new Belen at 500 SW 127th Ave.
The original Belen was chartered by the queen of Spain and founded in Havana in 1854.
After Fidel Castro took power, Belen became an institution of the state and the Jesuits were booted out.
The old Belen is now a military training school.
Many of the Jesuits came to Miami and vowed to resurrect the old school. They began work in 1961 in downtown Miami and ended up at the present site 20 years later.
Leopoldo Nunez, now the executive principal at Belen, started off as a history teacher and has worked at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School for 27 years.
''The same fathers that graduated from Belen in Cuba came to work here. The school is excellent in all respects -- discipline, education, teachers,'' Nunez said. "A group of exiles, as a community of Cubans, have committed themselves to success [starting the school in Miami]. I have never seen anything like it in history.''
Cuban native Juan Dorta Duques is part of Belen's alumni association.
He left the island in 1961 and graduated from the old Belen in 1940.
He and the association director work to keep the school's history alive and help different classes organize their reunions.
''The most rewarding part of my job is helping people with their spiritual needs and helping Cuban alums reunite in Miami,'' Duques said. "It's difficult because the men are scattered around the world.''
Joseph Antonio Ortega, creator of a Goya food company product called Sazon and a 1947 grad, will be hosting the last night of the reunion at his home in Coral Gables.
''I offer the space because I love seeing the same faces of those I graduated with,'' Ortega said. "Celebrating together reminds me of the peace and freedom of the United States.''
Another 1947 grad, Andres Deixler, will travel from Little Neck, N.Y., for the event, his third reunion with his old classmates.
''These are my companions and, with patience, we take in the impressions of today and think of all our yesterdays together,'' he said.
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
