Sophia Villalobos


Esterio Segura - Museum of Latin American Art

Esterio Segura

Esterio Segura born in August 1970 in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba became well know for some of his controversial works of art. Born and raised around political and social turmoil in Cuba, his works give an inside look at what it was like being living in Cuba at the time. Esterio's work has a lot to do with migration, censorship and cultural isolation and his works usually include mixed mediums such as, charcoal, acrylic, pastels, graphite pencil and perhaps some conte crayon. Cuba wasn't the greatest place to live at this time, Esterio wants to show the world his experiences of the Cuban turmoil. The Museum of Latin American Art is displaying some of his amazing work from November through February 2015.

This picture on the left, has got to be my favorite by him (unfortunately I didn't get the title of the work) but as soon as I saw the painting I was drawn into it. The picture depicts a man with demon like dragons attacking him from all sides. They come for his eyes so he's not a witness and does not see the errors and misfortunes of the society he's in, but one thing that really stuck out to me were his hands. At a first glance it looked like they were just attacking his hands, but when I looked closer, the only thing that was being attacked were the mans middle fingers. During the time Esterio was living in Cuba you could not state your opinion, let alone go against the governments, you either had to keep quiet and deal with whatever was going on or you could be killed. It was that simple, yet horrifying.

Fly Away - 2001

Another thing that caught my attention in his works is that he seems to draw a lot of ways to travel as in: airplanes, cars, boats and submarines, why could this be though? In Cuba under the rule of Fidel Castro you were not allowed to go in or out of Cuba. The dream was to escape the communist rule in Cuba, but the reality was that you couldn't. I feel that as a child or even while growing up, Esterio dreamed of getting out of Cuba and starting new anywhere else, somewhere he could be free, speak his mind and express his artistic abilities. All of my favorite artist have been the ones that share their life and stories through art such as Frida Kahlo. Personally I'm very glad I got to see and enjoy his work. My favorite work has always been surrealism but I like that he includes real objects in his work like we did in our art class.