Adigio Benítez Jimeno

Education and Professional Experience

He graduated from San Alejandro National School of Fine Arts in 1949.
His art career began as a draftsman of political issues in the publications Voz del Pueblo, Mella magazine and Noticias de Hoy. Later he illustrated the newspapers Granma and El Habanero.

He is a Professor of Merit of the Higher Institute of Art, a member of the National Council of the Association of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and President of Honor of the International Association of Visual Arts (AIAP).

In the 1950s he made his first paintings, in which he broaches social problems, and since the triumph of the Revolution he began to paint series of militiamen, welders and women working in factories. Late in the 1960s he began to conceive drawings and paintings in which the characters seemed to be made of plied paper, a kind of origami, contrasting them later with appropriations of figures of universal art.

He has presented more than 30 solo shows and participated in around 150 group exhibitions in Cuba, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Rumania, Poland, Italy, Mexico, the United States of America, Russia, the Dominican Republic and Spain, among other countries.

Awards and Residencies

Prize of Painting and Grand Prix René Portocarrero of the UNEAC Salon, Cuba; Mention at the Second Biennial of Committed Realism in Sofia, Bulgaria; National Prize of Art Teaching and National Prize of Fine Arts 2002, both from Cuba. Acquisition Prize at the National Salon of Drawing, 1959, 1961, 1963.

Collections

His works are in exhibition at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, Cuba; the Bacardi Museum, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba; Ignacio Agramonte Museum, Camagüey, Cuba, and in private collections in Mexico, USA, Puerto Rico, England, Germany and Russia, among other countries.

Publications

He has written four books of poems.