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<b>René Portocarrero</b><br>
Vista de La Ciudad de La Habana<br>
(<i>View of the City of Havana</i>), 1970<br>
mixed media on heavy paper laid down on board<br>
19 ¾ x 26 inches<br></br>

Havana was René Portocarrero's natural habitat. If once - during his childhood years – El Cerro neighborhood defined his universe, the painter's coming of age marked his unfolding towards the confines of the capital city. We can say that if any Cuban seized Havana and, at the same time, the city claimed the painter its own, that was René Portocarrero. “Here are the hundred and more cities - let us be wary of the figures in the catalog - seized and captured by the Prodigious Magician, Don René Portocarrero. Are all of these perhaps just one?”, would note Eliseo Diego, friend of the painter and Originista as well, in comments written precisely for the exposition, Landscapes of Havana by René Portocarrero, University of Havana, October, 1978, L Gallery.
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Roberto Fernández Retamar, earlier, in his words for the exhibition, Portocarrero: The Color of Cuba, May, 1963, Havana Gallery, had observed, “One city is not made with a compass upon paper: it is made by combining necessity with contingency, caprice with duty: the balcony from where you can view the sea, with the plaza of kisses; the contorted street with four hundred years of rain over a number of stones. This is how Havana has been crafted. And Portocarrero has painted it, bringing along with him its interiors, its stained glass windows, its gates, its cupolas, its skies. Havana has been sung by a poet with the certainty only a poet can express.”
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Ramón Cernuda

René Portocarrero
Vista de La Ciudad de La Habana
(View of the City of Havana), 1970
mixed media on heavy paper laid down on board
19 ¾ x 26 inches

Havana was René Portocarrero's natural habitat. If once - during his childhood years – El Cerro neighborhood defined his universe, the painter's coming of age marked his unfolding towards the confines of the capital city. We can say that if any Cuban seized Havana and, at the same time, the city claimed the painter its own, that was René Portocarrero. “Here are the hundred and more cities - let us be wary of the figures in the catalog - seized and captured by the Prodigious Magician, Don René Portocarrero. Are all of these perhaps just one?”, would note Eliseo Diego, friend of the painter and Originista as well, in comments written precisely for the exposition, Landscapes of Havana by René Portocarrero, University of Havana, October, 1978, L Gallery.

Roberto Fernández Retamar, earlier, in his words for the exhibition, Portocarrero: The Color of Cuba, May, 1963, Havana Gallery, had observed, “One city is not made with a compass upon paper: it is made by combining necessity with contingency, caprice with duty: the balcony from where you can view the sea, with the plaza of kisses; the contorted street with four hundred years of rain over a number of stones. This is how Havana has been crafted. And Portocarrero has painted it, bringing along with him its interiors, its stained glass windows, its gates, its cupolas, its skies. Havana has been sung by a poet with the certainty only a poet can express.”

Ramón Cernuda

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