Florencio Gelabert, Cuban Master Florencio Gelabert Sculpture Large Wood Carving Bust Man Portrait

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Florencio Gelabert Y Perez (Cuban, 1904-1995)
Hand carved, signed; 1979
Materials: Cuban wood (mahogany?)
Dimensions 23 X 4 X 4 … Read more Florencio Gelabert Y Perez (Cuban, 1904-1995)
Hand carved, signed; 1979
Materials: Cuban wood (mahogany?)
Dimensions 23 X 4 X 4 inches
Label affixed to underside: National Registry of Cultural Assets of the Republic of Cuba Ministry of Culture.
Provenance: Art Master Collection, Miami, Florida.

Florencio Gelabert, with a style reminiscent of Art Deco and Art Nouveau in a Latin American Expressionist stylization. Carved wood sculpture. Depicts a modernist stylized form of a man in a streamline moderne style.
José Florencio Gelabert Pérez (Caibarien, 1904 - Havana, 1995) Cuban musician, sculptor, draftsman and teacher. He graduated from the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts in 1934. He received numerous awards, mentions and recognitions in Fine Arts Halls and Circles. His works are in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts. Florencio Gelabert is a renowned sculptor, who made more than twenty solo exhibitions beginning in 1929, several in the National Museum of Fine Arts, and participated in more than thirty collectives in Cuba, Spain and Brazil, the latter in the Sao Paulo Biennial. he traveled from Caibarién to Santa Clara in 1928 to audition to enter the famous San Alejandro Fine Arts School in Havana. He obtained one of the five vacancies. Already in the Cuban capital, he combined fine arts and music. When he graduated, he became a professor in San Alejandro and the academy’s principal in 1960.
With a calling common to wood sculptors –which began with his primary school carving carpentry classes and the active life of his home town’s shipyards, his chisels and gouges feverishly turned mahogany, “ácana” and ebony into female heads with black African features dating back to 1930.
In 1938 he used his savings to explore Europe: France (Paris, Marseilles), Italy (Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice), Belgium (Malina). His encounter with the works by Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin, Ossip Zadkine, Constantin Brancusi and even with Wifredo Lam, who was also born in another Cuban coastal area, Sagua la Grande, and his encounter with the nude marble David sculpture by Michelangelo all marked important points in his artistic development.
Following his European journey, his Carribean roots seemed intact. Technique filled his senses. “It was like planting ideas”, said the artist years later.
Gelabert traveled to the United States (New York, Washington, Philadelphia) in 1940. There he discovered the incalculable values of the concrete which covered large skyscrapers. Later, he was certain that the material could be used to make sculptures. Years later he lived in Mexico, where he met muralist Jose Clemente Orozco and held a personal exhibit at the Fine Arts Palace with 40 works, some of which made with the lost wax technique that he learned in the Latin American nation. The Riviera Hotel in 1957 allowed the artist to give free reigns to his imagery and show how beautiful sculptures could be made of concrete, though he preferred to make a series of bronze figures for the facility’s lobby. With the ocean as fiercely background, Gelabert designed a series of sculptures for the hotel’s entrance: a sea-horse, a nymph, a shark, dolphins, made of highly resistant direct concrete. He created La Velocidad (Speed), which decorates the entrance to Havana’s Bus Station; the Atlantico Hotel’s fountain in Santa Maria del Mar beach; the immense crab at the entrance to his hometown of Caibarién; the large mural made of pieces of marble in the convergence of Primelles and Santa Catalina streets in the Cuban capital.
José Florencio Gelabert Pérez (Caibarién, 23 de febrero de 1904-La Habana, 30 de agosto de 1995) Músico, escultor, dibujante y profesor cubano. Se graduó en la Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro en 1934. Recibió numerosos premios, menciones y reconocimientos en Salones y Círculos de Bellas Artes. Obras suyas se encuentran en la colección permanente del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. Florencio Gelabert es un escultor de reconocimiento.Realizó más de veinte exposiciones personales desde la temprana fecha de 1929, varias en el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, y participó en más de treinta colectivas en Cuba, España y Brasil, en este último en la VI Bienal de Sao Paulo.
Of the generation of Cuban Masters Wifredo Lam, Agustin Cardenas, Manuel Mendive, Sandu Darie, Agustin Fernandez, Jose Mijares, Amelia Pelaez, Mariano Rodriguez, Lolo Soldevilla and Rafael Soriano. He has been shown in the finest expositions and museums devoted to Cuban Art. See less