René Francisco (1960) - Ignopolis. Serie.

René Francisco. Cuba. 1960
Category: Printmaking and Graphic Arts
Series: Ignipolis
Publisher: Del Campo and others. Taller del Prado. Madrid.
Technique: Lithography
Support: Conqueror Connoiseur 300 g paper
Dimensions: 62 x 82 cm – (50 x 70 cm image)
Edition: 100 copies
The numbering of the copy may vary, but always within the certified edition of 100 original copies, signed and hand-numbered.
P/A: 10
H.C.: 10
P/T: 5
Genre: Abstract, Geometric

Belonging to a generation of artists that emerged at the end of the eighties, René Francisco Rodríguez (Holguín, Cuba, 1960) was awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 2010 by the National Museum of Fine Arts. This prize, awarded annually by the Cuban Ministry of Culture since 1994, is bestowed only once on a visual arts creator, living and residing in the country, for a lifetime body of work. This is the first time it has been awarded to an artist born after 1959.

René Francisco is a graduate of the National School of Arts (ENA) in 1982 and the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in 1987, a center where he has pursued an unconventional teaching. Since the 1990s, he has become an essential reference within Cuban art in his duo with Eduardo Ponjuán and later through his solo career.

His artistic discourse has maintained a constant ascent, combining experimentation, renewal, investigation, critical sense, and social interest; affinities that also appear in his transgressive pedagogical work, which forms an indivisible unity with the entirety of his creation. René Francisco has proven to be a "facilitator or medium"—as he himself recently defined it—for more than one generation of emerging artists, some of whom are now recognizable figures in the Cuban visual arts movement.

His work as an educator, already twenty years long, received international recognition for the first time at the VII Havana Biennial, when in 2000 he was awarded the UNESCO Prize for the promotion of the arts to Gallery DUPP—third edition of his project From a Pedagogical Pragmatism. Subsequently, the Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in California, United States, in 2001, recognized his dual role as an artist and mentor.

Twenty-four solo exhibitions testify to his creative energy. Among the most significant of the last five years are: his presentation at the 52nd Venice Biennale, Italy (2007), Crossed Histories at PanAmerican Art Projects, United States (2008), and in Havana, the exhibitions Interpreter (2009) and Paintings of Yesterday and Tomorrow (2010).

A precise homage is due to his socially engaged work known as Patio de Nin, in the El Romerillo neighborhood (2004/2005)—to cite just one example—and also his collective project Plaza Almada (2009), linked to residencies, workshops, and courses in various places around the world. The multifaceted and dynamic body of work by René Francisco, linked to social, critical, and irreverent themes, refers not only to existential problems of the country but also to the intricacies of its history.

The procedural character of that work and its performativity have risen, as has his artistic practice, affirming his belief that art meets life, dissolves into it, and can transform it.

He has now become part of several of the most important collections in Spain, in addition to those already including, for example, the Jorge Pérez Collection of Miami, Ella Fontanal de Cisneros, etc. He is preparing for November 2026, as Curator of an exhibition at Casa de América on the occasion of the Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State.