Antonio Guerrero
watercolor exposition inaugurated in Havana
•
Fifteen watercolors, one for
each of the 15 years the Cuban Five have suffered in
prison, in an exposition entitled Yo me muero
como viví, (I will die as I have lived) by
Antonio Guerrero, inaugurated September 11, in
Havana’s José Martí Memorial.
Introduction
Antonio Guerrero
"YOU need to try do something from
the inside, directed outward, instead of continuing
to do pieces from the outside, directed inward."
This is what my brother in struggle and art Arturo,
photographer and visual art critic, insisted after
having seen and photographed a large portion of my
work.
I had to spend several weeks
repeating his words to myself, letting them sink in,
until one fine day, the images I sketched and then
took to watercolor paper, where they acquired color,
began to emerge. All of these images have something
in common. They are memories of the unjust and cruel
treatment we were given from the first day of our
arrest, moments of our survival over 17 months,
isolated in punishment cells called ‘the hole’ in
the Miami Federal Detention Center.
Arriving at number 15, I decided to
end the work with this quantity, coinciding with the
number of years in captivity we will reach September
12, 2013.
Reproducing the environment in this
area, gray tones predominate in each painting. They
were basically created by mixing three primary
colors, yellow, red and blue. The fragments of
orange represent the prisoners’ suits we were all
required to wear in that place, which therefore
serves as a representation of us.
At first, my idea was to do these
watercolors as studies, to subsequently create
larger-format works with oils. Nevertheless, as I
advanced, I noted that in their simplicity, there
was beauty, and above all harmony.
As usual, once I started with the
first sketch and the first watercolor, I didn’t stop
until I had done all fifteen.
In the near future, we are planning
to enrich this work with writings, poems and other
visual artwork by the five of us, and thus reveal,
with these memories, that first period of our
imprisonment, which we could describe as the
roughest and cruellest.
There, those of us who didn’t know
them, learned the lyrics to Silvio’s emblematic song
"El necio" and, everyday, with no communication from
anyone, facing cruelty and brutal punishment, from
inside, directed outward, we firmly asserted: "I
will die as I have lived."
Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez
April 25, 2013
Marianna Federal Prison
