Bellas Artes de Cuba presented the pictorial work of Ernesto Rancaño

A selection of pieces created from the 1990s to the last days of Ernesto Rancaño today make up the exhibition Como estatuas de sal (Like Salt Statues), at Cuba's National Museum of Fine Arts.

The exhibition, a tribute to the prolific creator who passed away last year, will open on February 3 and will run until April 23, in order to illustrate his mastery, for which he occupies a privileged place in the plastic arts of the largest of the Antilles.

According to the institution, the project is made up of loans received from private and institutional collections that treasure "the vast collection bequeathed by Rancaño to his family", as well as works that belong to the Museum.

"The selection exhibits a look back on the trajectory of this author and undoubtedly invites to that necessary and critical study on the place of Ernesto Rancaño in Cuban art today, when his creative cycle has been frozen in the definitive and transcendent poetry," says the invitation to the exhibition.

Como estatuas de sal comes a year after the physical departure of the creator, "an artist of refined sensitivity, recognized for the mastery of his brush and strokes, creator of an imaginary of symbols that identify a very broad and prolific production," the text points out.

It also highlights Rancaño's ability to insert himself into "postmodern trends, combining dissimilar languages that range from the use of traditional pictorial techniques to objects and video installations, without ever abandoning the surreal and dreamlike spirit of his work".

More than thirty pieces make up the exhibition that covers nearly three decades of work, up to "the last painting on the easel in his studio, on which the artist was working at the time of his death," says the Museum on the social network Facebook.

With this proposal, the institution approaches the work of the artist who "scrutinizes the universal individual, physical body and political being, who only manages to define himself in relation to his immediate reality and his time," marked by a nostalgia for the future that is perceived in the infinity of his horizons.