Zaida, Wakes Up in Her Dreams

No one has been surprised, no one should be surprised that the award given this Friday of the National Prize for Plastic Arts to painter, sketch artist, and engraver Zaida del Río.

It has been a decision applauded by legions of fans of a very rich work, with a marked lyrical calling, fascinating in its baroqueism, with a wide thematic spectrum, perfectly identifiable in the great panorama of art in Cuba.

Zaida is one of the most prolific and popular Cuban artists. Zaida’s projection transcends pictorial creation, although it has been there, in that world that she has populated with wonderful creatures and bewitching natural motifs, the area in which she has crystallized her poetics.

Because Zaida, more than style, is poetic. A very personal vision of its contexts, which illuminates a work deeply rooted in her farmer origins, but which opens, in a prodigal spectrum, to other geographies, spiritual currents, recreations of the circumstances of the human being... and, above all, which becomes celebration of beauty and love.

Zaida del Río has always chosen beauty.

The National Award, which she will receive this week, recognizes her teaching and commitment to the culture of her country, which she has enriched in dialogue with the universal heritage.

Women, birds, and flowers, waters of rivers and seas, snails, dreamy architecture and plant labyrinths... elements of a dreamlike and thriving universe that has placed Zaida del Río, painter and poet, among the greats of Cuban art.

Her work is a plunge into the dreamlike, which manifests itself in lavish expression: it’s like an inspired impulse that she does not usually leave free spaces on the canvas.

We once said it: We all dream, but Zaida has the gift of making her dreams come true.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff