Ernest - Sumergidas

Ernest M. is a young Cuban artist who trained in the city of Manzanillo, Granma, in eastern Cuba. He currently lives and works in Havana, where he continues to develop a steady body of paintings and an artistic career focused, to a large extent, on exploring 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 painterly language. Women suspended beneath the surface, faces crossed by reflections, fish, flowing hair, optical distortions, bubbles, and shifts in light recur in his compositions—not as mere decorative devices, but as part of an increasingly distinctive visual universe.

One of the most interesting aspects of his painting is precisely his treatment of water as both a pictorial and psychological element. Ernest manages to depict the water’s surface, reflections, and light-induced distortions through brushstrokes that range from figurative painting and expressive realism to moments bordering on hyperrealism. His intention, however, does not seem to be limited to faithfully reproducing a scene: he uses these distortions to transform the human face and body, creating images that exist between the real, the dreamlike, and the introspective.

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

The way the artist handles composition is also distinctive. In many of his paintings, the waterline cuts directly across the subject’s face or body, dividing the image into two realities. In others, the viewer sees the scene entirely underwater. This choice creates a feeling of silence, suspension, and isolation that recurs throughout his work. Water thus becomes a boundary, a refuge, and a space of transformation.

The series includes more intimate and contemplative compositions, while others feature a freer, more gestural and expressive style of painting. This variety allows us to observe the evolution of an artist who continually experiments within a recognizable theme without being confined to a single formula.

Another noteworthy aspect is the materiality of the works. Photographs convey the overall structure of the compositions and their chromatic richness, but the paintings take on a considerably greater dimension when viewed in person, revealing more clearly the variations in brushwork, layers of color, texture, and subtle shifts in light that create a sense of depth.

The repetition of certain elements—the female figure, fish, partially submerged faces, floating hair, reflections on the surface, and the intense blue of the water—is helping to shape a recognizable artistic identity. For a young artist, this consistency is especially significant, as it demonstrates a determination to build a sustained body of work rather than produce only isolated pieces.

Ernest is currently maintaining an active artistic practice and continues to develop his career through exhibitions and projects in Cuba, Spain, and other international contexts. His works have gradually attracted buyers and collectors outside Cuba and are now part of private collections and galleries in various countries across Europe and Latin America.

His paintings are also regularly offered at Catawiki auctions, where his work has been well received by the public and collectors.

Acquiring a work by Ernest means engaging with the work of a young Cuban artist who is still growing, but who already possesses particularly valuable qualities for an emerging career: a clearly identifiable subject, continuity in his pictorial explorations, a growing mastery of color and the representation of water, and, above all, the pursuit of a visual identity of his own.

His aquatic series is currently one of the most personal strands of his work and offers a fine example of how an apparently everyday motif can be transformed through painting into a reflection on the body, identity, silence, beauty, and perception.

In Ernest’s work, water functions not merely as a setting: it acts as a second language that fragments, transforms, and reconstructs the human figure.


Artwork by artist Ernest, created using oil on high-quality professional canvas.
Painting dimensions: 80 x 60 cm.
Original work.
Shipping will be handled by United Parcel Service (UPS) for Spain and Europe, and by FedEx for the rest of the world.
The work will be shipped rolled, protected with several layers of packaging and bubble wrap, and placed in a sturdy tube.
Once the work has been paid for, three days are required for packing and delivery to the shipping company.
The piece will arrive within ten days, depending on the destination country.
This lot includes AI-generated images. Please consult the original photographs to verify the actual condition of the work.

This dazzling oil-on-canvas work captures, with exceptional technical mastery, the dynamic energy and fleeting beauty of underwater movement. The composition depicts two female figures in the midst of a dive, their bodies sculpted by light interacting sublimely with vibrant blue hues and the water’s crystalline glints. The richly textured, lively brushstrokes render with extraordinary realism the golden reflections on the surface above and the foamy trail left by the swimmers’ determined progress, evoking an absolute sense of freedom, synchrony, and weightlessness. Its chromatic richness and masterful interplay of light and shadow make this piece a contemporary jewel, sure to captivate any collector seeking to evoke nature’s depth, movement, and vital force through art.