Thank you very much for visiting my first online exhibition. Here you can read a preview about Cuban Landscapes show.
In order to enjoy an optimal experience, I would recommend you access it from your computer. We have created different shortcuts to help you navigate through the exhibition. We have also added a Visitor's Book in which you can leave your impressions if you wish. Enjoy!
SOY CUBA SERIES, 2019
Landing (Aterrizando)
Acrylic on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches (200 x 300 cm), comprised by six panels of 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches (100 x 100 cm), 2018.
This is the first piece from the Soy Cuba series, a cloudscape based on a photo taken from a plane descending over the province of Havana. Approximate altitude of 5500 feet.
Guidance
Steps in the process
A detail
Sunrise at Pico Turquino (Amanecer en el Pico Turquino)
Acrylic on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches (200 x 300 cm), comprised by six panels of 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches (100 x 100 cm), 2018.
This is a view of the Sierra Maestra during a trip with friends to the Eastern part of Cuba during the summer of 2013. The image was taken very early in the morning before reaching the top of Turquino Peak, the country’s highest point with 6476 feet.
Guidance-Sketch
Main colors
A detail
Zapata Swamp (Ciénaga de Zapata)
Acrylic on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches (200 x 300 cm), comprised by six panels of 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches (100 x 100 cm), 2019.
Private collection, New York City, USA.
The Ciénaga de Zapata is the largest wetland in Cuba and the Caribbean, located in the province of Matanzas. Its landscape reaches a maximum of 32 feet above the sea level. This is how it looks from the road that leads to the town of Playa Girón.
Guidance-Sketch
Color pencils - Mixed colors
Color map
"Over the course of his nascent career, Toledo has explored the manifold properties and applications of color through a wide array of abstract practices. Imbued with this chromatic and abstract sensibility, the landscapes of Soy Cuba represent a fusion of the abstract and the pictorial, the formal and the organic, and the rational and sensuous. In these paintings, Toledo employs a recently developed technique that allows him to build up a painted relief pattern across the canvas, resulting in a geometric, surface texture that profoundly complicates the mixing and application of colors to the relief and the background, respectively. By applying a single, uniform color to each element of the relief pattern, he preserves the integrity of these discrete units, thereby producing the larger image through a vast network of color relations."
Read Color Vision in the Landscapes of Roger Toledo by Francesca Bolfo.
At Dusk (Al Anochecer)
Acrylic on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches (200 x 300 cm), comprised by six panels of 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches (100 x 100 cm), 2018.
The sun goes down and I´m facing North. This is in Varadero, on the Hicacos peninsula, the northernmost point of the Cuban geography.
Guidance-Sketch
Sky´s main colors
A detail
Towards Veril´s Edge (Hacia el Canto del Veril)
Acrylic on canvas, 78 3/4 x 118 inches (200 x 300 cm), comprised by six panels of 39 3/8 x 39 3/8 inches (100 x 100 cm), 2018.
Canto del Veril is the first large marine platform that surrounds Cuba. This photo was taken while diving at 85 feet deep on the northern coast of Havana, close to this edge that can be found after 90 feet deep.
Guidance-Sketch
A detail
“Rising over the Sierra Maestra mountains, looming over the Zapata swamp, and setting over a North Shore marina, the sun acts as a marker of the time of the day in three of the five paintings that comprise Toledo’s Soy Cuba series. In these paintings, three distinct historical moments—the Revolution of 1959, the 1961 Batalla de Girón, and the Special Period of the 1990s—are made to synchronize with uneasiness during the timespan of a day. Although the sequential nature of the paintings that comprise Toledo’s paintings may seem to evoke a conception of time and history as a chronological succession of distinct moments, I suggest that the series alternatively presents a type of non-teleological change that can only be perceived through the small incremental contingencies of the everyday.”
Read Island Time: Temporality and History in Roger Toledo’s Soy Cuba Series by Isabelle Lynch.
LANDING, 2015
Landscape with Coast Line (Paisaje con Costa)
Acrylic on canvas, 35 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches (90 x 120 cm), 2015.
Private collection, Philadelphia, USA.
Detail 1
Detail 2
Landscape with Road (Paisaje con Carretera)
Acrylic on canvas, 35 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches (90 x 120 cm), 2015.
Private collection, Philadelphia, USA.
Detail 1
Detail 2
Landscape with Landing Track (Paisaje con Pista de Aterrizaje)
Acrylic on canvas, 35 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches (90 x 120 cm), 2015.
Detail 1
Detail 2
Landscape with River (Paisaje con Río)
Acrylic on canvas, 35 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches (90 x 120 cm), 2015.
Detail 1
Detail 2
Landscape with Trees (Paisaje con Árboles)
Acrylic on canvas, 35 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches (90 x 120 cm), 2015.
Detail 1
Detail 2
Landscape with Wall (Paisaje con Muro)
Acrylic on canvas, 35 1/2 x 47 1/4 inches (90 x 120 cm), 2015.
Detail 1
Detail 2
CREDITS
Curatorship: Etien Martínez and Roger Toledo.
Web development: Moncytic Marketing.
Texts: Francesca Bolfo, Isabelle Lynch and Etien Martínez.
Acknowledgments: To all my family for their enthusiasm and unconditional support, who celebrate and live with me, the beautiful adventures of my career. To my valuable assistant Yoelbis with whom I share my work days. To my two dear friends Cesar Reigosa and Etien Martínez, companions of creative logic. Thanks to Francesca Bolfo, Isabelle Lynch and all the great team of young curators of the exhibition Soy Cuba / I´m Cuba, the matrix of this show; and especially to its manager, my dear friend Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw. To all those who enjoy, admire and celebrate my work, thank you very much.