Over the past few days, we at The Annex Gallery have received the first copies of Rafael Zarza. Toda la corrida artística (The Full Artistic Bullfight). The essay was written by Hamlet Fernández Díaz, a faculty member of UNIPAM’s Graduate Program in Education. He holds a Doctor of Science in Art and a postdoctoral degree in Education, and he currently works as a professor, researcher, and art critic. His name is widely recognized across the Spanish American cultural ecosystem, and many regard him as the most powerful and authoritative voice of his generation in Cuba, his country of birth. A preliminary version of this essay was previously published by RIALTA Magazine in early 2024.
Two years later, Zarza’s “artistic bullfight” has been revisited by its author and substantially expanded—now supported by dozens of images—to appear as a full-length book. Its content and edition were reviewed, approved, and authorized by Zarza himself. Our main motivation was to offer a meaningful tribute to a creator of his stature: a giant who, paradoxically, has often gone largely unnoticed.
As absurd as it may seem, until now there was no work that systematically analyzed, conceptualized, and brought into focus the most significant aspects of his artistic production, from the mid-1960s to the present. This is not just another artist, but a living classic of Cuban art—one of the most original, vital, and critical bodies of painting and printmaking produced within Cuba over the past five decades. With this book, we do what the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes—and no other Cuban state arts institution—ever dared to do: grant space and full relevance to every facet of Zarza’s work, without censorship or omission. This edition lays out the entire bullfight: every aesthetic charge, every creative victory—Zarza as the great toro bravo of Cuban art he has always been: untamed and free.
The volume also inaugurates Rosenkrantz Editions, a publishing platform aligned with The Annex Gallery’s mission: to amplify the work of local artists and of creators from the peripheries of all five continents who, for various reasons, are producing their work today in the context of the Midwest, with particular attention to the Spanish American sphere. These are artists who face steeper barriers to entering the demanding circuit of first- and second-tier commercial galleries in the United States.
This year, alongside our regular exhibitions of Cincinnati-based artists, The Annex Gallery envisions a dynamic program of exhibitions featuring Spanish American artists working in the Midwest—in different U.S. cities, and even in their countries of origin. In one way or another, all of them have collaborated with our programs and projects, both those of the gallery and those of Bridges Not Walls, a project that is now, practically, a decade in the making.
About the Authors
Rafael Zarza (Havana, 1944), National Prize for the Plastic Arts (2020), is a central figure in contemporary Cuban visual culture. His sustained career and multifaceted practice span painting, printmaking—especially lithography—illustration, and design. Associated with the generation of Cuban artists that emerged in the 1970s, he has built a recognizable universe marked by the force of his poetics—described by specialists as sarcastic and incisive—and by the recurrence of anthropomorphic figures and motifs that function as his unmistakable signature. In his work, bullfighting surfaces as a symbolic axis through which he satirizes extreme characters and attitudes, turning the bull into a metaphor of struggle and power, while moving with ease between the graphic language of print and the painterly field, without perceptible rupture. His work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Cuba and abroad, including significant participation in the Havana Biennials—particularly the first, at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, and in collateral events—as well as international presentations such as the Sixième Biennale de Paris, exhibitions at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and showcases of contemporary Cuban art in Beijing. His work is also held in major public and private collections in Cuba, the United States, and Europe.
Hamlet Fernández (Cuba, 1984) holds a PhD in Art Studies from the University of Havana and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Education at the University of Uberaba, Brazil. He is a researcher, essayist, and art critic, and served as a professor at the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Havana from 2008 to 2017. He is currently a professor in the Graduate Program in Education at the Centro Universitário de Patos de Minas (UNIPAM), Brazil. In 2019, he received the Alejo Carpentier Essay Prize for La acera del sol. Impactos de la política cultural socialista en el arte cubano (1961–1981), published by Letras Cubanas in 2020 and by Editorial Hypermedia in 2021. He is also the author of Ensayos sobre Arte y Educación. Perspectivas posmodernas (Eliva Press, 2021); Educación estética o la poesía de cada instante. Estudio crítico sobre concepciones de enseñanza de Artes Visuales en Brasil (Appris Editora, 2021); and Estética Violada. Teoría de la recepción de las prácticas artísticas posmodernas (Editorial Hypermedia, forthcoming).
You can buy the book here
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