Agustín Fernández

Among the most cosmopolitan artists to emerge from Cuba’s final vanguardia generation, Agustín Fernández (1928-2006) ranks as one of Surrealism’s most discerning latter-day interpreters. Fernández cultivated an idiosyncratic visual language distilled through the erotics of desire and vulnerability, provocatively ratcheted up through contact first with the post-war Surrealist circle in Paris and, starting in 1972, with the gritty counterculture of downtown New York. The trajectory of his career, from the lyrical exuberance of his early work in pre-Revolutionary Havana to the coolly sadistic armored plates of later years, suggests a rich assimilation of the artist’s Cuban inheritance and identity with the conceptual sophistication of the contemporary art world. Working betwixt and between more familiar currents of Latin American abstraction and nationalist paradigms, Fernández charted a sui generis course, and his oeuvre speaks subtly both to the condition of exile and to the canny perseverance of Surrealist tropes into the postmodern landscape. 

McEwen, Abigail. “Agustín Fernández, The Enigma of Desire.”, Art Nexus. Vol. 85, No.11, 2012 [illus.], pp. 60-65.

News

Navigating the Line, October 26-Ongoing

A comprehnsive exhibtion at the Leon Tovar Gallery, presenting artwork by Agustin Fernandez that includes both oils and works on paper.

New Catalogue-I Am a Painter of the Brush

This publicationis the first in a series of catalogues that the Agustín Fernández Foundation is releasing, as part of its ongoing efforts to promote a deeper appreciation and understanding of the work and life of Agustín Fernández. It presents an essay by Elizabeth...

Master Drawings, New York, January 21-29, 2022

For this year's Master Drawings exhivtion in NY, Leon Tovar Gallery celebrates the highly experimental and Surrealist-informed style of represented artist Agustín Fernández via a selection of large scale works on paper.

The Agustín Fernández Foundation was established in 2005 to preserve, promote and honour the work of Cuban artist Agustin Fernández (1928-2005). The foundation is a 501(c) (3) organization that relies on the generous support of donors to foster scholarship, exhibition, publication and archival projects on the life and work of Fernández.