As unlikely as it seems, there has been a rekindling of interest in the life and work of my mother's uncle, the great Cuban artist, Micah Carpentier.
Born in Riga in the winter of 1926, the family moved to Havana in 1929 following Nikolai Bukharin's expulsion from the Politburo.
Born in Riga in the winter of 1926, the family moved to Havana in 1929 following Nikolai Bukharin's expulsion from the Politburo.
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| Micah Carpentier, Havana, 1977 |
Humble by nature, Carpentier lived his entire Latin American life in his childhood home on Calle Jorge Colomé 17.
Known primarily for his monumental "Song of Degrees," - his massive collection of drawings on discarded paper bags - Carpentier was a seminal figure within the Caribbean avant-garde. Referred to by his peers as "el dibujante grande," Micah was loved and admired by that stubborn fragment of Cuban society that struggled to remain vibrant and independent both under Batista and later under Castro.
Ironically, it was his work as a third-rate, second generation abstract expressionist that first provoked the ire of the government. Seeing so-called "imported action painting" as a thinly veiled call to anarchism and dissent, Arturo 'Bebe' Mendes, Batista's Ministro de la Cultura y Diseño Industrial warned Carpentier that to continue that type of work would be to subject himself and his family to grave, existential uncertainty. "There is no place in Cuba for derivative, non-objective, shallow-spaced drivel," Mendes was reported as saying.
Humiliated and depressed, my great-uncle began doodling on grocery bags from Union Double Discount, a south Florida supermarket chain that had recently opened a few pathetic stores just outside Havana. (Did they really think cubanos would buy sliced turkey and twinkies?!)
He really didn't consider these pieces part of his oeuvre, (we use to use them to carry our wet bathing suits home from the beach on our summer holidays). In a weird way, I think he always felt a greater kinship with fellow Russian refugee, Mark Rothko than with Rodrigo Perec, Emmanuel Silva and Moisés de Leon with whom he is more generally linked.
I suppose it's another case of 'thank goodness for repression.'
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| Calle Jorge Colomé 17 |
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| detail from The Song of Degrees, Micah Carpentier, 1969 |
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| An Itinerary of Reasoning, Micah Carpentier, oil on canvas, 1957 |
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| Early prototype for The Song of Degrees, Micah Carpentier, 1959 |
I suppose it's another case of 'thank goodness for repression.'
