Yoel Finalet- Cuba

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Cardenas, Cuba - Finalet is He studied at the Academia de Arte San Alejandro in La Habana and participated in several group exhibitions before the age of twenty.
His artistic practice began in Cuba, where I participated in several group exhibitions. At the San Alejandro School of Fine Arts, I was influenced by many of my teachers, including Wilfredo Oscar de la Concepción y Castilla (Wilfredo Lam), Carlos Enríquez, René Portocarrero, and Rita Longa Aróstegui. My early painting consisted mainly of Cuban landscapes, popular culture, and portraits. I experimented with several mediums, always trying to capture the personality and spirituality of the subject. In this early period, my style tended more toward realism, but had a distinctly “phantasmic” quality, achieved through strong and vibrant colour, movement, and perspective. Over the past few years, my work has become increasingly abstract, but the emphasis on colour and movement has endured. Although still inspired by Afro-Cuban culture, I am using more textural variation and symbolism. My painting has become more a process of self-exploration and expressive of the spiritual dimension of life. It is through this evolution that the proposed project was born. My program is to create a series ofpaintings (20-25) exploring the spiritual dimension of Santeria religion and culture.Santeria is the belief system representing the hybridization of early African religions and Spanish Catholicism,which evolved as a result of the influx of African slaves into the colonial world during the seventeenth century. During the past few years, Yoel’s work has been an exploration of the spiritual dimension underlying Santeria, a hybrid of early African religions and Spanish Catholicism that evolved as African slaves were absorbed into the colonial world. In his recent paintings, Santeria's spirituality is expressed using rich color, texture, and Orisha symbolism. Orisha is one form of Santeria, which remains alive today in Cuba as well as many other Latin and Caribbean countries