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Agustín Cárdenas Curriculum
Agustin Cárdenas was born in Matanzas, Cuba in 1927 and studied at the Academia de Bellas Artes 'San Alejandro' in Havana from 1943 to 1949.
His first individual show was held at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Havana in 1955, and that same year he travailed to Paris on a scholarship. His wood and stone sculptures are biomorphic and expertly realized, provocatve both intellectually and sensually.
The affinity that the surrealists felt for his work led to his first exhibition there, at the Galerie L'Etoile Scellle in 1956. Since then Cárdenas has been exhibited widely in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. At the Biennale de Paris in 1961 he was awarded the prize in sculpture.
Among his many individual shows have been FIAC, Paris (1980,1984); Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas (1982); International Gallery, Chicago (1990). His works appear in many museum and private collections, including Fond National d'Art Contemporain, Montreal; Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv; Hakone Museum, Japan; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas; Musee d'Art Moderne de la ville de Paris. Cárdenas has lived in Paris since 1955, and works in Paris and Carrara, Italy.
Under the auspices of the magazine, Avance, the First Exhibition of Modern Art was held in Havanna. The magazine cheered on the changes of direction taken by the plastic arts in a context that Marinello defined as the “critical decade”.
Since his days at the San Alejandro Academy, the “master of masters” of Cuban sculpture, Juan José Sicre, recognized in Cárdenas the vigor and creative imagination that accompanied him throughout his career, from his early work at the end of the 1940’s through the experience of “Los Once” to the mature, definitive work of his Parisian period. In 1995 he was awarded the National Prize for the Plastic arts, along with another outstanding Cuban sculptor, Rita Longa.
He worked wood, marble and bronze with the same ease and sureness and with a poetic freshness that demonstrated that traditional media are not at odds with each other. He was comfortable dialoging ideologically with Brancusi or Henry Moore, with all the vitality afforded by an island whose sense of itself derives from its creative involvement in the linguistic codes of contemporaneity.
Cárdenas’ impeccably finished, imaginative and truly poetic work has a parallel in painting in the work of another great Cuban artist, Wilfredo Lam.
Agustín Cárdenas’ farewell leaves a void, as each great artist does, but the compensation is his universal legacy in which he was able to capture, in the words of Ricardo Pau-Llosa, “the apprehension of those intangible forces that give life form.”
Exhibitions
1999 Cologne, Ludwig Museum, 'Art-World in Dialogue'
1998 Augustin Cardenas - Jean Prouvé', Maison Verte Paris
Internation Festival of Biarritz. (solo)
1997 Retrospective, Paris
Le Surréalisme et l'Amour, Pavillon des Arts Paris
Rétrospective', Milano. Galeria del Credito Valtellinese (solo)
Paris, Pavillon des Arts, « Le Surréalisme et l’Amour »
New York, The Art Show, Jeffrey H. Loria
1996 New York, The Art Show, Jeffrey H. Loria
The Art Show, Jeffery H. Loria New York
1992 Caracas, FIA, Miami, International Art Esposition Arco
Galerie JGM Paris (solo)
Galerie du Château, Genève (solo)
1991 International Art Exhibition, Miami (solo)
André Breton, Centre G. Pompidou Paris
Art Exhibiton in Tokyo (solo)
1990 Paris, FIAC
'Bois', Galerie JGM Paris
1989 Museo de Bellas Artes Caracas, Venezuela
Salon de Mars, Paris
1988 'Trente ans de Sculpture', Galerie JGM Paris
Galerie JGM, Paris (solo)
1987 Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom
Open Air Museum, Yorkshire, England
1984 Paris, FIAC (solo)
1982 Caracas, Museo de Bellas Artes (solo)
1980 Fuji Television Gallery Tokyo
Group Exhibition, Japon
1978 Festival of Lyon, Lyon
1973 Biennale Internationale de la Petite Sculpture II, Budapest
1972 Musée Galleria Paris
1971 'Sculputures' Parc Floral, Paris
1969 Richard Feigen Gallery Chicago
Biennale de Sculpture, Antwerp
1968 International Biennale of Sculpture, Carrara, Italy
1967 Biennale Internationale de Sculpture, Carrara
1965 'Babel 65', Musée Galliera, Paris
1962 - 1965 L'Art Latino Américain, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris Paris
1962 L'Objet, Musée des Arts Decoratifs Paris
1960 - 71 Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, La Habana, Salon de mai
1960 Musée de Saint-Etienne, 'Cent sculpteurs de Daumier à nos jours'
1959 Museum of Fine Arts Houston
Galerie de La Cour d'Ingres Paris
'Exposition internationale du Surréalisme,' Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris
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