René Francisco (1960) - Ignopolis. Serie.

René Francisco. Cuba. 1960
Category: Engravings and Prints Graphic Work
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 who emerged in the late eighties, René Francisco Rodríguez (Holguín, Cuba, 1960) was distinguished at the National Museum of Fine Arts with the National Award for Visual Arts 2010. This award, granted annually by the Cuban Ministry of Culture since 1994, is awarded only once to a visual arts creator, living and resident in the country, for a lifetime of work. This is the first time it has been awarded to an artist born after 1959.

René Francisco graduated from the National School of Art (ENA) in 1982 and from the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in 1987, a center where he has taught an unorthodox pedagogy. Since the 1990s, he became an obligatory reference within Cuban art in his duo with Eduardo Ponjuán and later for his solo career.

His artistic discourse has maintained a constant ascent, combining experimentation, renewal, research, critical sense and social interest; affinities that also occur in his transgressive pedagogical work, which forms an inseparable unity with the totality of his creation. René Francisco has proven to be a “facilitator or medium” – as he himself defined it recently – for more than one generation of emerging artists, some of whom are today recognized figures of the Cuban visual movement.

His work as an educator, which already adds up to twenty years, was internationally recognized for the first time at the VII Havana Biennial when in 2000 the DUPP Gallery – in its third edition of the project From a Pedagogical Pragmatics – was awarded the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts. Subsequently, the Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in California, United States, in 2001, acknowledged both his work as an artist and his teaching.

Twenty-four solo exhibitions to date attest to his creative energy. Among the most relevant 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, Interprets (2009) and Paintings of Yesterday and Tomorrow (2010).

Notable is his socially driven work known as Patio de Nin, in the El Romerillo neighborhood (2004/2005) – to cite just one example – and his collective project Plaza Almada (2009), linked to residencies, workshops and workshops in different places around the world. The multifaceted and dynamic work built by René Francisco, tied to social, critical, and irreverent themes, refers not only to existential issues of the country but also to the intricacies of its history.

The performative and processual nature of that work has risen, just as his artistic practice asserts 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 where he already is, such as the Jorge Pérez collection in Miami, the Ella Fontanal of Cisneros, etc. He is preparing for November 2026, as curator of the exhibition at Casa de América on the occasion of the Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State.