Cuba’s main newspaper, Granma, announced that the National Council on the Arts awarded its 2014 National Award to artist Lázaro Saavedra (Havana, 1964) “in recognition of his creative career and values of a work characterized by conceptualism and his adept handling of humor and irony.”
A member of PURE, one of the leading groups that represent the artistic movement of the eighties in Cuba, Saavedra has developed a versatile body of work with reference to his use of modes of expression.
His creations have been recognized both in Cuba and abroad and he has developed a “persevering educational work” in the training of several generations of Cuban artists, the newspaper said.
Saavedra has been a critical artist. During the “little war of emails,” he published a gallery of cartoons that lampooned [hegemonic] power. The incident occurred after a national TV program invited Luis Pavón Tamayo, one of the executors of censorship in the seventies.
The jury that chose Saavedra was chaired by Eduardo Ponjuán, National Arts Award 2013, and comprised by other national awardees in Visual Arts: Osneldo García, Pedro Pablo Oliva, René de la Nuez, José Villa, Nelson Domínguez, Ernesto Fernández Nogueras, and Ever Fonseca; and artists Iván Capote, Abel Barreto, and Abel Barroso; Manuel López Oliva, Critical Award for Life Work; and art critics María de los Ángeles Pereira, David Mateo, and Axel Li.
Other artists that were nominated by different institutions were: José Antonio Choy, Lesbia Vent Dumois, Salvador Corratgé, Zaida del Río, Roberto Salas, Juan Moreira, Pedro de Oráa, José Manuel Fors, Alberto Lescay, Alexis Leyva Machado (Kcho), Eduardo Roca (Choco), Manuel Hernández Valdés, Rafael Zarza, and Rocío García.
[Artwork above: Lázaro Saavedra’s “El síndrome de la sospecha” and “Autoerotismo intellectual.”]
Many thanks to Gerardo Mosquera for bringing this ítem to our attention.
For original (in Spanish), see http://www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1415873101_11244.html
See more on the artist at http://havana-cultura.com/en/visual-arts/lazaro-saavedra
