FIRST CUBAN AMERICAN MUSEUM EXCHANGE IN OVER FIVE DECADES!

First Cuban American museum exchange in over five decades, featuring Mario Sanchez and an array of Cuba’s finest artists.

This exhibition, comprised of 30 intaglios from private collections and Old Island Restoration Foundation, explores issues related to gender, racial and religious freedom brought by utopian Creole Cubans to Key West during their struggle for independence from Spain. Mario Sanchez, a second generation American whose grandparents fled Cuba during the Ten Years War was born just six years after Cuba gained it’s independence from Spain. Key West was the richest city per capita in the United States and the majority of the population had been Cuban since the 1860s. Cigar rollers were the best paid factory workers in the US and unionized.

The theme of equality has resonated throughout humanity since the Golden Age of Greece and by the time Cuba’s utopian Creoles began their final push France and the United States had proclaimed themselves democracies. Yet in The United States, African Americans, Asian Americans, women and religious minorities still did not have the vote and slavery and discrimination were still widespread. Mario Sanchez developed a unique technique of carving and painting depictions of this special place in time in history and the utopians who peopled it.

To this day the island of Key West exudes equality and freedom like nowhere else on earth. The city motto is ‘One Human Family’ reflecting a 150 year history of embracing diversity with gusto. Mario Sanchez´s themes include equality, the great American Dream, which include all the Americas, and humor.

One Race opens with blacks, whites and Hispanics, men and women working side by each in the Marrero and Gato Cigar Factories. Other selections include Twins in a Conchtown Garden, two very well educated women and Drowning the Sorrows of Life a pitiful homeless veteran drinking sour-belly wine about whom Mario related, “No one comes back from war the same”. Eastern European Jews flocked to Key West with the advent of the Pogroms. The Wolkowsy, Aronowitz and Lewinsky buildings on the main street, Duval, figure prominently in celebrated works such as Golden Era and Al Boza’s Comparsa.

Humor is a great equalizer and each of his finely detailed works included some humor such as the Cuban tradition of “Rump Watching”, gossiping, people, dogs, cats and children stealing fruit in the trees. The veteran has wine bottles in his ears so that he “Won’ t have to listen to anybody”.

The exhibition, curated by Nance Frank, Mario Sanchez specialist, and Hortensia Montero, Curator of Contemporary collections MNBA, includes some of Mario Sanchez’s seminal pieces, a few of which were presented in January of 2013 by the American Folk Art Museum, The Museum of the City of New York and the South Street Seaport Museum. Many of the works of art are on loan from the original families that purchased them during Mario Sanchez’s seven decade career.

The Mario Sanchez One Race, The Human Race Project encompasses a series of
residencies and exhibitions in Key West during the month of February, 2014 by Cuba’s legendary artistic talent among whom: Manuel Mendive, Roberto Fabelo, Rocío Garcia, The-Merger, Stainless, Reynerio Tamayo, Sandra Ramos y Rubén Alpízar will participate.

The National Gallery Bellas Artes in Havana & In Key West, The Hemingway House Museum, The Studios of Key West, Old Island Restoration Foundation, Mel Fisher Museum and The Gato Cigar Factory will be venues for the exhibits and are all onboard.