Cuban Visual Art Influences the Work of a Costa Rican Painter

The Return of Images: Prints by Hernán Arévalo is considered the largest exhibition of prints by a Costa Rican artist in Cuba.

Havana, November 3 – On his second visit to Cuba, with The Return of Images: Prints by Hernán Arévalo, the Costa Rican painter fulfills a long-held dream: exhibiting at Casa de las Américas, an institution to which he donated six pieces from the show to enrich its Latin American art collection.

For the artist, the exhibition, “as the title suggests, is a return to the images and ideas that I once drew upon from the history of Cuban art: Wifredo Lam, Manuel Mendive. It’s like going back to my roots and something I’ve always wanted to do.”

“The exhibition turned out beautifully, very serious, and that was thanks to the team at Casa de las Américas… it feels like a dream come true, because I wanted to exhibit here at Casa, which is the beacon of Latin American culture,” he commented.

Trained at the University of Costa Rica's School of Fine Arts and with over three decades of artistic experience, Hernán Arévalo has developed a body of work distinguished by its technical mastery and its ability to integrate tradition, modernity, and social critique.

His work is characterized by a visual language charged with chromatic force, hybrid figures, and mythical allusions that reconfigure the imaginaries of identity, memory, and resistance.

In this new exhibition, according to the exhibition notes, Arévalo explores the narrative power of printmaking as an expressive medium, establishing a dialogue with the Caribbean and Latin American aesthetic heritage.

Return to the Roots

Regarding this first exhibition, Silvia Llanes, Director of Visual Arts at the cultural institution, stated: “We hope it will be repeated and that this will be the first of many projects.”

The exhibition, which will run until November, features works created using woodcut and chromoxylography techniques between 1991 and 2025.

At the exhibition's opening, Llanes emphasized the privilege of exhibiting Arévalo's work, noting that "this is the first time we've held such a large solo exhibition of prints by a Costa Rican artist," and highlighting his mastery of the techniques employed.

She added that "it will be a lasting memory because of the beauty of the works and their close connection to our feelings and our culture."

Lilian Rodríguez, Chargé d'Affaires of the Costa Rican Embassy in Havana, thanked Casa de las Américas on behalf of the diplomatic mission for hosting the exhibition and emphasized the historical ties that bind the two nations. According to Rodríguez, “Hernán Arévalo is a representative of the finest Caribbean and Latin American traditions and of the bond between Costa Rica and Cuba that dates back to the late 19th century, when Antonio Maceo, Flor Crombet, and other Cubans settled in Costa Rica and founded the canton of Nicoya,” where they were frequently visited by Cuba’s National Hero, José Martí.

Rodríguez referred to the long tradition of wood engraving or xylography in Costa Rica and emphasized that Arévalo, “with wood and chisel, creates a universe where animals and beasts intertwine with nude female figures and urban landscapes.” His works, he considered, are a testament to the cultural richness and diversity of the Caribbean and Latin America, reminding us “of the importance and necessity of preserving our traditions.”

The exhibition, he said, “promises to immerse visitors in a vibrant world of colors and forms influenced by the rich cultural heritage of Latin America,” where “Arévalo presents us with a unique and fascinating vision of the relationship between nature and humanity. In each print there is color, form, movement, music, syncretism, and magical realism, as described by Alejo Carpentier in his article ‘The Marvelous Real.’”

Casa de las Américas is a cultural institution founded on April 28, 1959, to promote sociocultural integration with Latin America, the Caribbean, and the rest of the world. (2025)
Source