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The Miami Herald "Cities By The Sea" (2003)
OC Register "The Colors of Cuba" (1998)
OCNOW (1998)
OC Register "Connects" (1998)

El Miami Herald, August 28, 2003

CITIES BY THE SEA
From his California home, Cuban painter Viredo imagines his mystical hometown of Regla.

By Fabiola Santiago

In a California city not far from the sea – as he cannot, will not live far from the sea – Cuban master painter Viredo Espinosa conjures the images of his Caribbean childhood in brightly splashed canvases.

Oils, acrylics, linocuts and aquatints depict the religious and musical themes of his birthplace of Regla, the mystical port city across the bay from Havana.

From his neighborhood near the water’s edge where ferries docked, and from his father’s barbershop where storytellers abounded, Viredo had a close-up view of a multicultural city, a cradle of Afro-Cuban culture and traditions.

He grew up among stevedores, ship carpenters and mechanics who worked and lived in Regla, most of them descendants of slaves who brought their ancient religious to Cuba.

There were the abakuá, an elite male society evolved from the Calabar region of West Africa, the palo monte who hailed from Central Africa’s Congo, and the practitioners of santería, the popular religion mixed with Catholicism that evolved in times of slavery among the lukumí, the Nigerian Yoruba.

“There was so much folklore that it was a direct influence, and I am still working from that place,” says the 75-year-old, who is known in Cuban art circles simply as Viredo.

One of only three living painters from a rebellious group of artist known as “Los Once” (The Eleven), which evolved during a vibrant 1950s period as an alternative to the traditional European-trained mainstream, Viredo has quietly worked in the West Coast for the last three decades since he left Cuba on one of the Freedom Flights of 1969.

In exile, he had to take up commercial work to earn a living, but Regla has never left his artwork, as the paintings that go on exhibit Friday in Little Havana illustrate.

THEMES AND SYMBOLS

The stunning mixed media on canvas The Cabildo is Coming depicts African drummers in a seaside park setting with Havana’s skyline in the distance. Sometimes in minuscule detail, the background incorporates characters, symbols and scenes like a harmonica player, a procession of worshipers carrying a virgin’s statue and the famous Regla ferry. The cabildos were aid societies organized by slaves to keep alive ancient traditions.

An oil on linen in striking blues, Iconografía de la Virgen de Regla, is a portrait of the patroness Virgin of Regla – Yemayá to santería practitioners. Likewise, the painting Irime features the main dancer in the public ceremonies of the abakuá. The dancer is dressed in the typical pointed cloth mask, a colorful outfit, and is surrounded by religious calligraphy.

Viredo learned the symbols when he was a youth already gifted in drawing and an elder abakuá who was losing his sight asked him to copy his notebooks.“They are ideographic and they represent a lot of things,” Viredo says. “I use them a lot in my paintings.

Llabó, an oil on canvas, is the painting of a woman dressed all in white, an initiate into the santería priesthood.

Some of his work also depicts African-Americans. A collection of linocuts, aquatints, and etchings – portraits of Cuban and African-American jazz and blues musicians – are included in The Smithsonian’s traveling exhibit, Latin Jazz: The Perfect Combination.

“I’ve been at exhibits where everyone is looking for the artists and they say, ‘He’s not here,’ And I am, but they are looking for a black man because of the African themes in my work,” says Viredo, whose white beard gives him a Hemingwayeske flair.

For the artist, coming to Miami, where he can contact friends from his Cuban past, is a special treat.

For the exhibit at Maxoly Cuban Art Gallery, Viredo has created a colorful poster commemorative of Los Once that evokes a time when the penniless artists met for literary and artistic tertullias, get-togethers, at Las Antillas, a Havana café favored because “the owner didn’t press us to order right away and let us go on and on for hours.”

Just recently, the Cuban government invited Viredo to participate in a Havana event to mark the 50th anniversary of Los Once. Two of his paintings from 1953 and 1957 are being exhibited at Bellas Artes, the Cuban national museum.

But Viredo declined the invitation.

“The truth is that, for me, it would be very emotional to go there and I’m too old to suffer through all that emotion.” He says. “I don’t travel that much anymore, but Miami, in Miami I’m home.”

THREE TIMES AN EXILE

He jokes that he’s “exiled three times over” – from Cuba, from Miami and from Los Angeles.

When he arrived in Miami in February of 1969, “they told me they didn’t want any more Cubans,” he says. “They wanted to send me to Virginia, but it was too cold there in February, so they asked me if I knew anybody in California, and I did. I had a friend.”

He and his wife Alicia ended up in Los Angeles, but he moved to Irvine, looking for a smaller community closer to the water.

“I should live in Miami,” Viredo says. “I visit whenever I can, above all else, because I love to eat fish from the Caribbean. People like the fish here in California, but we Cubans like the snapper and the yellowtail from the Caribbean. There’s nothing like them.”

LEFT:The oil on linen 'Irime,' below, features the main dancer in the public ceremonies of the abakuá, an elite male society evolved from the Calbar region of West Africa.

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OC Register "The Colors of Cuba" (1998)

AN ARTIST AND HIS WORK: Viredo Espinoza, in exile from his native Cuba for 30 years, now paints in his Irvine apartment.

The colors of Cuba

CULTURE: Exiled Cuban artist Viredo Espinoza maintains a vivid Caribbean style.

November 30, 1998

By GUILLERMO X. GARCIA
Photos by JEBB HARRIS
The Orange County Register

Viredo Espinoza's deep brown eyes sparkle and his lilting Spanish softens as he recalls the vibrant Havana of decades past, a time that predated communism, rationing and neighborhood spies working for state security.

CULTURAL LEGACY: In works such as 'Sese Eribo,' Espinoza celebrates Cuba's African heritage.

"Painting, that is what mattered, that is what I lived for, and it was a beautiful time," he says, wistfully peering past the gloom of an overcast morning in drab Irvine.

As has become his custom over decades, the 70-year-old has painted daily, but only by natural light. On this cloudy day, he will glance at, but not touch, the palette covered with a riot of colors. Nursing a cup of strong, sweet coffee, he decides to talk rather than work.

He quotes from Kafka, cites Fellini's "Satyricon" and speaks of ancient African and Greek mythology as easily as he talks about "black blues from the South, the music that I love, that inspires me."

Sitting in his studio in a small, neat Irvine apartment surrounded by his boldly colored, Afro-inspired art, he recalls a time long passed when the island's artist community flowered and pulsed with a soulful, lusty Creole Caribbean beat. The surrealistic Afro-Cuban characters on his canvases reflect the proud, mystical and rich culture of African slaves imported to the New World by Spaniards.

"There is no way to excuse or justify what was done to the enslaved people. But at least, a very small concession was that they were allowed to carry on their customs, traditions and cultural way of life. That is the source from which my art evolved." He was honored this year by public television station KCET, which named him one of five outstanding Hispanics "who make a difference in Southern California."

In his youth, Espinoza was part of El Grupo de Once, the Group of 11, an influential, trendsetting collection of artists known for their caustic, iconoclastic art. They poked fun at everything from then-dictator Fulgencio Batista to conventional European art styles that were so in vogue in the late 1950s. Time and distance caused Espinoza to lose track of his fellow painters and sculptors, most of whom are now dead.

He has lived in Orange County for 20 years, after several years in Los Angeles, where he worked for a commercial sign company and "hard line" sketching for department stores. Since coming to Irvine, he has dedicated himself to drawing "only what I like, not commercially, but for the sake of my art and myself."

What he likes is to render what he views as the melding of the mythology and symbols of the ancient African religious beliefs with New World Christianity."I try to document, via paint, the great tradition of those cultural mixes. In that regard, it is hard for me to consider myself a 'local artist.' I am more a Cuban painter living in the United States. "Actually, I am not even an artist, I am an artisan practicing a sublime art. And I still strive to one day become an artist."

But whether on his Web page www.viredo.com the murals he has painted around Orange County and Long Beach; the paintings hanging in galleries in Laguna and Sunset Beach; at Rafi's, a Cuban restaurant in Tustin; or at the Frida Kahlo Theater in downtown Los Angeles, his art remains as vibrant today as the cherished memories of the island home he left more than three decades ago.

"I used to do portraits just to earn cash, but I ended up making enemies, because I would paint what I saw, and people wanted their portraits done as they see themselves, not as they are seen," he says with a laugh. It is an iconoclastic view of life, his unwillingness to bend, that not only is his motivation for attacking the canvas today but marked his career in Cuba and eventually forced him to leave that country.

Born 100 meters from the water's edge in Regla, a small port town on the opposite side of the bay from Havana, Espinoza has been painting for more than 65 years.

"I was maybe 4 or 5,when I drew and painted a Christmas poster as a present for my grandmother and the family. She loved it, and I haven't stopped painting.

"Two things stand out about Regala. It had a beautiful bull ring that was banned (after Castro assumed power), and it was the hometown of that famous beisbolista, Jose Canseco.

"And, of course, it was where my love for art was born."

In their prime, Los Once were the anti-establishment leaders who disdained official patronage or recognition from the government's cultural apparatus.

"We ... were actually 15, but when it came time to publicly come out by having our own exhibit, without the approval of the authorities, four of the group decided they did not want to risk it, so they pulled out at the last moment.

"Me, I did not care. I tried my best to remain isolated from all that political stuff, but for refusing ... to seek official sanction, I lost most of my privileges. Basic things like being able to buy paint. But having to support a political line bothered me to my heart and soul, and I had no desire to be involved in that."

But it was not until Fidel Castro took control after Batista fled that "real problems were created for me."

Yet Espinoza continues his lifelong effort interpreting on canvas the stylized lives of mythological, turban-topped, drum-pounding musicians and faith healers who are the symbols of theAfro-Cuban culture he grew up with.

He left his homeland after being ostracized, humiliated and forced to leave behind his possessions, including all his artist'ssupplies.

"I made a bargain with Mr. Beard," he says ruefully of his painful departure.

But he smiles and his eyes fill with mirth as he refers to the Cuban premier by his world-famous stringy beard.

"He took everything I had, except my wife. In return, he let me leave the island of my birth.

"I didn't want to leave, because I was lost outside my element, outside the world that was there," he says pausing and holding his emotions in check.

"But in the end, I had to leave."

Before he was given his exit visa, he was thrown out of his apartment and relocated to the countryside, where for more than three years he was forced to work as an agricultural laborer cutting sugarcane alongside attorneys and doctors who had also applied to leave.

"But that could not have hurt me as much as having my posters and murals taken down at (Havana's) Fine Arts Museum and relegated to the basement, where no one, not even myself, would ever see them again. Eso fue el colmo " that was the pits," he says, shaking his head.

He pauses, pain visible across his face even through a thick, white beard.

"Ah, but the tragedy of my Cuba is so much more important than the hurt feelings of one old man," he says finally.

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OCNOW 1998

Net Reflections

Creating Art in the light of
Orange County

BRIAN CHEE
OCWeb Scout

For more than 40 years, Orange County resident Viredo Espinosa has used imagination and color to create paintings and murals, many of which have graced exhibits in Havana, Miami and southern California. Visit Viredo's web site at www.viredo.com and view a selection of his paintings, learn more about the artist and get dates for future showings.

Viredo Espinosa struggles to keep himself from his art. He will tell you there's no room for sadness in his paintings, no spot for anger and regret or the millions of feelings this Cuban artist has about fleeing his homeland more than 30 years ago.

His art is to be enjoyed for its beauty and depth, not appreciated for its message. But he is an artist, so feelings such as these creep in no matter how hard he fights to suppress them. The sweet memories of past days spent at Cuban coves slip into the colors he selects; the silent regret of knowing he will never go home again impacts the perspective of his creative enterprise.

The Art of Introspection Viredo struggles to keep beauty and color as his only inspiration. "My art is one of introspection," says Viredo. "I do not need to go somewhere and copy what I see. I see enough in my imagination."

For 40 years, Viredo's imagination has created paintings and murals which have graced walkways and exhibits in Havana, Miami and southern California. In Cuba, where he had just begun to establish himself as a respected young artist, Viredo was a member of "Los Once," a group of young Cuban artists who would eventually influence contemporary Cuban art. Much of his work is still on display throughout Cuba.

After leaving Cuba, Viredo lived in the Miami for a short time before settling down in 1969 with his wife Alicia in Huntington Beach. "I enjoy living here," says Viredo. "It’s clean and quiet, and the light is good for my painting."

Patience, Rhythm, Color Light Southern California has what artists call Oriental light. For an "abstract expressionist" like Viredo, that’s a significant benefit. "In the Oriental light of Southern California, Viredo is making an invisible world visible," notes admirer Dr. Jorge Hernandez Martin. "His best canvasses draw you into an Afro-Cuban world created with precision, craftsmanship and an unerring sense of hue, cast and tone."

As far as Viredo’s concerned, painting is about patience, rhythm, color and light. "Many of my young associates ask me how I create such vibrant, beautiful colors," says Viredo. "I tell them it takes incredible patience, and a steady hand." That and a hint of home kept alive with bittersweet memories.

DAWN CHMIELEWSKI
Orange County Register

As one of a group of artist known as "The Eleven" Viredo Espinosa influenced a generation of contemporary Cuban painters in the 1950's with his abstract expressionist works. But recognition has largely elude him. So the painter, now 70 and living in Irvine, has turned to the internet to bring his works to the world.

"I would like for him to receive some recognition, which he deserves." said Mariano Sanchez, a friend who created Viredo's Web Site. "All this stuff you hear about artists 50 years after they're dead - that's nice and all. But I would like for him to get the recognition, so that he can see there are people who appreciate his work."

Viredo showed early promise - training at The School of Fine Art in Havana and exhibiting his paintings in the prestigious Salon de Pintura y Excultura. After his first one-man show, he joined a group of 10 artist who exhibited their work together. - As the political climate changed in the late 1950s, Viredo daid the group disbanded and many fled the country.

When he left Cuba in 1969, Viredo left it all behind. "I could not take nothing with me," he said Viredo and his wife move to Miami, and later to Southern California, where he worked as a commercial artist to pay the bills. Only recently have his works attracted the attention of the art community at exhibitions in Florida, New York and California. The internet has heightened that recognition. "We've received E-Mail from unbelievable places... places in Spain,Australia. It's incredible," Viredo said.