Ernest - Inmersión

Ernest M. is a young Cuban artist trained in the city of Manzanillo, Granma, in eastern Cuba. He currently lives and works in Havana, where he continues to develop a steady pictorial production and an artistic career centered, to a large extent, on the investigation of the human figure and its relationship with the aquatic environment.

In recent years, the artist has developed a series devoted to immersion, water, and the human figure, turning these elements into one of the most recognizable features of his pictorial language. Women suspended beneath the surface, faces pierced by reflections, fish, hair movements, optical distortions, bubbles and changes of light appear repeatedly in his compositions, not as simple decorative resources, but as part of an increasingly defined visual universe.

One of the most interesting aspects of his painting is precisely the treatment of water as a pictorial and psychological element. Ernest manages to represent the water surface, reflections, and the deformations produced by light through brushstrokes that oscillate between figuration, expressive realism, and moments close to hyperrealism. However, his intention does not seem limited to faithfully reproducing a scene: he uses those distortions to transform the face and the human body, creating images that sit between the real, the dreamlike, and the introspective.

His palette is clearly dominated by deep blues, turquoise, greens and marine tones, which frequently contrast with reds, ochres, oranges and warm hues applied to skin, fish, flowers or reflections. This chromatic contrast gives a strong visual presence to the works and makes the figure emerge from the underwater background even when it seems completely integrated into it.

Also characteristic is the way the artist works composition. In many of his paintings, the flotation line traverses directly the face or body of the character, dividing the image into two realities. In others, the viewer observes the scene completely submerged. That choice generates a sense of silence, suspension, and isolation that appears repeatedly in his output. Water thus becomes a border, refuge, and space of transformation.

Within the series there are compositions of a more intimate and contemplative character, while others present a freer, gestural, and expressive painting. This variety allows us to observe the evolution of an artist who continually experiments within a recognizable theme without being limited to a single formula.

Another notable aspect is the materiality of the works. The photographs allow appreciating the overall structure of the compositions and their chromatic richness, but the painting gains a considerably greater dimension when observed physically, where the variations of brushwork, color overlays, texture and the small changes of light with which the sense of depth is constructed can be perceived more clearly.

The repetition of certain elements—the female figure, the fish, the partly submerged face, the floating hair, the surface reflections and the intense blue of the water—is helping to shape a recognizable artistic identity. In a young creator, this coherence is especially significant, as it demonstrates the will to build a sustained body of work and not just isolated pieces.

Ernest currently maintains an active artistic production and continues to develop his career through exhibitions and projects both in Cuba and in Spain and other international contexts. His works have gradually found buyers and collectors outside Cuba and currently form part of private collections and galleries in different countries of Europe and Latin America.

His paintings are also regularly offered at auctions on Catawiki, where his work has received a good reception from the public and collectors.

Buying a work by Ernest means approaching the work of a young Cuban artist who is still in the process of growth, but who already possesses especially valuable elements within an emerging career: a clearly identifiable theme, continuity in his pictorial research, growing mastery of color and the representation of water and, above all, the search for a personal visual identity.

His aquatic series currently represents one of the most personal facets of his production and constitutes a good example of how a seemingly everyday motif can be transformed, through painting, into a reflection on the body, identity, silence, beauty and perception.

Water does not function merely as a setting in Ernest’s work: it acts as a second language that fragments, transforms and reconstructs the human figure.

Artwork by the artist Ernest executed in high-quality professional oil on canvas technique.
Dimensions 60 x 80 cm of painting.
Original edition.
Shipping will be carried out via United Parcel Service (UPS) for Spain and Europe, and via FedEx for the rest of the world.
The artwork will be rolled and protected by several layers of packaging, bubble wrap, and placed in a sturdy tube.
Once the artwork is paid for, three days are required for the packaging process and delivery to the shipping company.
The piece will reach you within ten days, depending on the destination country.
This lot contains AI-generated visualizations. Please consult the original photographs to verify the artwork’s real condition.

This oil on canvas presents a top-down composition of strong sensory character, where the figure of a woman in a red swimsuit floats in serene contemplation over a body of crystal-clear water. The artist achieves notable technical mastery in depicting the water, using expressive brushstrokes and caustic interplays of white light to suggest the gentle movement of the waves and the sun reflections traced on the skin and the turquoise-blue background. The color palette creates a powerful complementary contrast between the warm tones of the swimsuit and the subject’s golden skin against the cold depth of the oceanic hues. The meticulous details, such as the small concentric waves generated by the hands and the subtle presence of little fish swimming around, add narrative texture to the work, evoking a sense of weightlessness, introspection, and total communion with nature.