Maria Fals The author is a critic and art historian
Antonio del Moral (Adelmo) is a Cuban American painter who graduated from the Academia de San Alejandro in Havana, Cuba. He has lived in the United States since 1962, where he continued his studies at The Corcoran School of Art and at American University in Washington D.C. He is the owner of the Adelmo Gallery, located in Miami, where he has his studio. He shares his creative experiences with Mike Hellem, vice president of this exhibition space and student. Stephany, his secretary and assistant, collaborates with them.
The visit to the creative world of Adelmo is a beautiful experience that communicates you with the magic and goodness of art. Antonio is a multifaceted visual artist, capable of working with excellence, different techniques, such as watercolor, with which he paints landscapes of the mogotes that surround the Viñales Valley in Cuba or a flowering field of tulips in Holland. He also uses gouache, with which he offers us different planes of color, he works with oil with which he creates various themes, including still lifes full of light, he uses acrylic paint in different formats, as well as etching and ceramic tiles. He also makes sculpture-paintings such as that of a torso covered with grids loaded with color.
Antonio del Moral, for work reasons, has traveled a lot and from each of the places visited he has wanted to capture the essence, the soul hidden in each breath of wind, in each silhouette, in each leaf or tree, in the ancient walls of a small church in Costa Rica, in the “little devils” of the Havana carnivals, in the tile roofs of the rural houses in Tuscany. The identity and the universal are recreated together in his artistic production, in which tropical light is a constant that invades and affirms the representation of each element.
The mythological themes of the Graces, the songbirds, the nude worked with a decorative line, the management of depth through the dynamics of color, the loose brushstroke at times, dotted at others or based on large planes enclosed in undulating lines and defined, lead us to say that he is a consummate artist who manifests himself with equal skill through different resources.
Admirer of the work of Amelia Peláez, on occasions he has paid tribute to her works, developing a personal interpretation of the painting of that great Cuban artist with whom he dialogues in the pictorial capture of the stained glass windows of the Havana half points highlighting the phytomorphic, the geometric and abstract.
As for styles, Adelmo like a wanderer, travels according to his taste and mood through imitations of impressionism, post-impressionism, fauvism and even synthetic cubism. In other works he surprises us with a very marked expressionism, which at times dilutes the form so much that it becomes abstract. Passionate about flowers, his violet orchids are twinned with anonymous yellow flowers or red lilacs that brighten the eye. Its mangoes and plums or apples are painted so realistically that we feel their perfume, which leads us to an “enchanted forest” where the rainbow has permeated the grasses and paths.
Some of his works are reminiscent of the Islamic art of atauriques and laceworks, his universe of shapes that are replicated in an orderly and highly creative space where the vibrations of color are the protagonists. The admiration for the Egyptian, which arises from his direct observation of the bust of Nefertiti, can be seen in other of his creations.
The joy of living, experimentation and the Platonic search for truth, good and beauty are the conceptual constants that are breathed when contemplating some of the legacies of this great Cuban, American and Latin American artist. His mastery and mastery, his desire to teach others the art of wisely mixing shapes, nuances, lines and textures is fully in force.
In a world like today’s, where the artist is sometimes ignored in the technical sheets of some great exhibition centers of contemporary world art, mentioning only the title of the work and the name of his collectors, gallery owners or dealers, valuing the The legacy of creators like Antonio del Moral is an essential mission for every art historian who refuses to forget those who highlight the culture of our people in other spaces that welcomed them, those who carry in their brushes the Homeland that does not they forget and whom they honor with their works.
LINK FOR ARTICLE: https://eldigital.com.do/antonio-del-moral-y-el-color-de-la-vida/