Eduardo Abela (1889–1965) was a

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

n painter and

comics a medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, captions, and onomatopoeia can indicate ...

artist. Born in

San Antonio de los Baños San Antonio de los Baños is a municipality and town in the Artemisa Province of Cuba. It is located 26 km from the city of Havana, and the Ariguanabo River runs through it. It was founded in 1802. History There are 39 schools in the town, ...

, he studied at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1921. For the next decade he lived abroad, first in Spain and then in France. In Paris he became acquainted with numerous Cuban intellectuals; among them was

Alejo Carpentier Alejo Carpentier y Valmont (, ; December 26, 1904 – April 24, 1980) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, and musicologist who greatly influenced Latin American literature during its famous "boom" period. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, of French an ...

, who encouraged him to develop his talent to depict native Cuban themes. Encounters with the work of

Jules Pascin Julius Mordecai Pincas (March 31, 1885 – June 5, 1930), known as Pascin (; erroneously or ), Jules Pascin, or the "Prince of Montparnasse", was a Bulgarian artist known for his paintings and drawings. He later became an American citizen ...

and

Marc Chagall Marc Chagall; russian: link=no, Марк Заха́рович Шага́л ; be, Марк Захаравіч Шагал . (born Moishe Shagal; 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist. An early modernism, modernist, he was associated with se ...

further shaped his style. Upon his return to Cuba, Abela created the character of "El Bobo" ("The Fool") as a protest against the

Machado Machado is a surname of Portuguese origin meaning the word "axe" or "hatchet" dating back to approximately 2nd century Europe. It is commonly found in Portugal, Spain, Brazil and Latin America, and India (Southern Tamil Nadu and Southern Kerala) ...

government. This he drew for ''

El Diario de la Marina ''Diario de la Marina'' was a newspaper published in Cuba, founded by Don Nicolás Rivero in 1832. ''Diario de la Marina'' was Cuba’s longest-running newspaper and the one with the highest circulation. Its roots went back to 1813 with ''El Luc ...

'' from 1930 until 1934. Abela's criollo character played the fool to satirize the difficult social and political situation in Cuba under Machado. In the second half of the 1930s Abela returned to painting, employing a naturalistic style influenced by early Renaissance painting and the Mexican mural movement. At this time he focused on an idealized view of the Cuban peasant and the countryside, as seen in his most renowned painting, ''Los Guajiros'' (1938), in which the Classical sobriety and order is the result of his contact with Italian medieval and Renaissance art.Segre, Roberto."Cuba: Painting, graphic arts and sculpture." ''The Dictionary of Art. ''Ed. Jane Turner. 34 vols. London:

Macmillan Publishers Limited Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...

, 1986. He also continued to paint, serving later in his career as a

cultural attaché A cultural attaché is a diplomat with varying responsibilities, depending on the sending state of the attaché. Historically, such posts were filled by writers and artists, giving them a steady income, and allowing them to develop their own creat ...

to Mexico and

Guatemala Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...

, and in 1937 operating the short-lived Free Studio of Painting and Sculpture. Abela died in 1965.

References

tag.
Biography
at alocubano.com * Veerle Poupeye. ''Caribbean Art''. London; Thames and Hudson; 1998. 1889 births 1965 deaths People from San Antonio de los Baños Cuban cartoonists Cuban comics artists 20th-century Cuban painters 20th-century Cuban male artists Male painters {{LatAm-comics-creator-stub