Painter, drawer, engraver and ceramist Alfredo Sosabravo who was born in Sagua la Grande, Las Villas province, has developed in the course of his proliferous life a rigorous way of doing things that has turned him into an important creator in Cuban plastic arts.

Being a teenager he made varied works in a courier company, varnishing in a carpenter’s workshop, assistant of pharmacy, and other occupations. He did not make up his mind for any of them, until he was in front of one of Wifredo Lam’s painting, an artist that aroused in him the pleasure for art and showed him an exquisite universe where to show his passions and his more finely elaborate desires. Exploring new expressions, giving free rein to instinct and turning it into his best ally would be indeed one of the paths to undertake a career without imagining it would give him plenty of prizes. 

The Escuela Elemental de Artes Plásticas Aplicadas (Elementary School of Applied Plastic Arts) was the base of his academic studies, education that he alternated with his work as a janitor. In spite of the effort to undertake both tasks satisfactorily, the love for art redeemed him and incited him to look for other alternatives to improve himself. Then, he met Ángel Acosta León, a friend that encouraged him to start off in painting and with whom he would gladly show his pieces in collective exhibition years later.

Presenting his work through numerous iconographies, but with a total control and certainty of what he wanted to do, Sosabravo managed to synthesize in a coherent context the contradictory elements of historic themes he worked with much freedom. From that strength he gives to his work, which more than an individual work acquires a public character, he goes from what is human to what is mechanic and from a restricted real space to countless apparent aspects.

He is a passionate of the artistic expressions with a high degree of traditional execution, whether it is the traditional etching or ceramics, expressions that were the avant-garde pillars of his work for many years, without quitting or minimizing painting. Dissimilar techniques characterizes a style that has enabled him to stand out and which are a mix of artistic tendencies like Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism, being spontaneity, freshness and the colorful nature the leading subject of his works. His art becomes sometimes tender, sometimes aggressive. There are images that entail political and social messages, where volume and texture serve to recreate a personal world beyond the two-dimensional nature of a work, while he imposes the will of his imaginary thinking.

One of the features that determine his work is humor. Sosabravo retakes symbols and characters that reappear in new contexts, kind of enjoying esthetic pleasure. Elements that can be classified as ingenuous by some but that enclose really serious contents he tries to get them to us in a pleasant way.  He plays with icons that denote motion, fascination, a new encouragement and disposition, while butterflies, fishes, flowers, glasses, ties, pairs of scissors, cubes, masks, umbrellas, pieces of mechanical origin, human and animal figures disarticulate themselves to create unknown elements. They are symbols that impose the new matter, mud and crystal as the delight of a new pleasure. The work with glass was the way he found to accomplish new figurations that he would later take to bronze, since the works conceived in Murano glass are part of a style with great contributions of refinement and skill.

The sensuality of creating with his own hands, the feeling of each piece taking shape and adjusting his tactile sense to the requirements of the material he used, takes over a work that turned into an adventure of pleasant movement. To that sense, Sosabravo marked a guideline in the development of an expression that was taking place in Cuba, and that other artists were working on: ceramics. However, he was the one whose work vindicated an occupation long minimized or being considerated as a mere utilitarian or ornamental art, except some exceptions. Only from Sosabravo’s work and those of other artists who joined up to the work with potter’s clay, the ceramics made in Cuba took another connotation, because utility and beauty joined up to what it is artistic. Incorporating new elements in order to change expressiveness, then nails and screws began to be part of the need to freely modify the traditional techniques, merging them with another monumental expression like sculpture. Then, with extraordinary determination he models clay, wood and glass and transfers to the canvas the objects’ plasticity.

His expertise does not limit to the aforementioned works; the mural is also part of his creative arsenal in order to go on with the conquest and to explore all the ways he has at hand, for in him resides disturbing questions on life, people and things. This is how he wants to share with us his enigmas and solutions. Each piece encloses an exaltation that masters the various stages and lets us see the roads of a thought turned into “work”. That way, he goes from the besieged spaces of his pictures, to the transparent sculpture, as a sample of new figurations to initiate his fantasy objects with the apparent naivety of the shapes, the will to make a dream eternal and the fusion of apparently incompatible elements.

For this going back and forth from one art expression in Plastic Arts to another, Sosabravo turned the artistic supports into the maximum expression of his universe of pictorial representations. In spite of the fact that from his work with the canvas or cardboard he had attained great success, the clay and the crystal managed to capture an oneiric world that managed to catapult an art where new expectations and alternatives reside.

With the same spontaneity, he moves to the other expressions assuming other possibilities, in order to conquer occupations to unravel the mysteries of disturbing figures for their modernity. In this work we can find a feedback of characters that appear and disappear of the pictorial scene and of a search for pleasure in order to leave messages anointed to conquer ethical contents.

Partly his works appears intentionally configured as recycling, because each piece implicates other possibilities. The intention, the rigorousness of the work and the perfectionism in the assembly exacerbate dynamism and the harmony. The nature of things or human bodies impregnate of a sub-reality so the observer can find new meanings. Elements that notice motion disarticulate to serve new commitments, meticulously determined grounds in ways and formats each time more ambitious. Pieces that integrate an organic world, in volume, color and texture where signs impose themselves to the new matter in order to set its domains.

Participating in dissimilar events proved to be important to develop particularities that would give him other technical possibilities. Artistic expressions like drawing, also endowed him of the positive appreciation given by critics. Teaching also called his attention, and it is a part of his affections and a process of feedback that provided him with the freshness and the good vibe that he takes to his works.

Sosabravo’s works denote an appreciation for disparity; where the unusual transcends, the will of what is dreamt with elements taken from pop art with great courage and spontaneity. He has made good use of his potentialities, achieving exquisite works that allows an emotional entanglement with the appetite for violence, intolerance and lack of affection. All these aspects are important part of his artistic work, but also they give it a sort of transpiration as way of defying creation.

Inspired sometimes by the flora and the fauna, and others by an expressiveness that gives him the objectivity, this artist acquires a technical freedom that contributes to offer the pieces a sculptural luck. Because his peculiar and wide way of creating, as to that he works different styles, makes him a distinguished artist from the 19060s, patient and diligent, who continues to delight us with his passionate adventures, his fantasies and ingenuity.

Without any doubt, Alfredo Sosabravo is a creator with a tireless activity in his profession that it is impossible to separate or to pigeonhole him in one or another artistic expression, which is why he has managed to project his art unbiasedly.

He has been granted many awards and recognitions for his artistic work during his life, among them the National Plastic Arts Award in 1997 and being an Illustrious Son of Cuba.

by Lisday Martinez

Translation: Mercedes Carballo (Cubarte)

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