Carlos Alfonzo
Bio
As a prodigious talent formalizing his practice in Cuba under Castro’s Communist Regime, Carlos Alfonzo attended the Academia de Bellas Artes, San Alejandro earning a degree in Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking in 1973. He continued his studies at the university of Havana, Cuba earning a degree in Art History a year later, in 1974. Only one month after the tragic passing of Carlos Alfonzo in in 1991 his paintings were exhibited in the Whitney Biennial of Contemporary American Art. Posthumous solo exhibitions, such as “Carlos Alfonzo: Late Paintings,” Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (2022), and “Carlos Alfonzo: Witnessing Perpetuity,” LnS Gallery, Miami, FL (2020) honor the legacy of the artist through a chronology of works that spanned from 1976 to 1990. Today, his work forms part of the permanent collections of world-renowned institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art, and the PAMM.
Statement
Carlos Alfonzo was a significant creative pioneer contributing to Miami’s role as a center of artistic force. Cautiously navigating the personal and artistic repressions of post-revolutionary life in Cuba as a queer artist, he became disenchanted with the sociopolitical climate. In 1980, Alfonzo fled oppression through the Mariel Boatlift and exiled to Miami. In the ensuing decade His work was exhibited in prestigious exhibitions including “Hispanic Art in the United States,” and the 41st Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at Corcoran Gallery. He was awarded a Visual Artist Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington D.C. and a CINTAS Fellowship in Visual Arts. Alfonzo’s life was tragically claimed by an AIDs-related illness at the age of 40. Known and remembered for an iconographical language uniquely his own, one can discern a codex of repeated themes and symbols in the work of Carlos Alfonzo and that aid in a rich oeuvre of storytelling.
Additional information
BIBLIOGRAPHY
¡Mira! The Canadian Club Hispanic Art Tour III, Hiram Walker Inc., 1988, essays by Inverna Lockpez, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, and Susana Torruella Level, exhibition catalogue, page 17 (ill).
Carlos Alfonzo: Late Paintings, ICA Miami, Miami, FL, 2023, essays by Antonio Eligio Fernandez, Gean Moreno, Iván de la Nuez, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, and César Trasobares, exhibition catalogue, page 207 (ill).
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
