Published in Matador’s Traverse Magazine, September, 2006

Havana’s annual film festival always attracts cinephiles from around the world, but 1999 was a particularly crowd-drawing year. With the premiere of Julia Mirabal’s documentary “Los Picassos Negros” (“The Black Picassos”), film lovers were in for a treat: the first visual evidence corroborating that there is a Cuban branch of the same Picasso family that produced the masterful Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Although the film was short, running 19 minutes total, the news that Pablo Picasso’s maternal grandfather had left his family in Spain and had a love affair with a Cuban woman that produced four children, sent historians, art lovers, and journalists alike scrambling for a scoop.

There were plenty to be had.

First, Francisco Picasso Guardeño, the maternal grandfather of Pablo Picasso, had not fallen in love with just any woman. He had fallen in love with a Black Cuban woman, Cristina Serra. Second, Serra was a free woman, not a slave, and while interracial relationships between white Spaniards and African-descended Cubans were not unheard of, it was still uncommon at that time for such couples to marry or live together. Third, the descendants of their four children were soon documented to include at least 40 living Cubans as of 2005. Fourth, one of those “Black Picassos” seemed to be following in the footsteps of his famous relative, establishing his own foothold in the world of art, and struggling with the blessing and burden of the famous name and justly renowned reputation of Pablo Picasso.

There’s no reason, of course, to think that Juan Antonio and Pablo would have anything in common other than their surname, but the attempts to draw comparisons are frequent, says Juan Antonio. While Pablo Picasso was considered to be a bohemian who enjoyed the company of others, especially female companions, and was quite the public man-about-town when we wasn’t busy painting prolifically, Juan Antonio is a quiet, reserved, unattached, man-about-home, who spends most of his time painting. In May of this year I visited him at his home in Havana and learned that the similarities between the two artists ends where their shared name begins.

I first learned about Juan Antonio Picasso from my husband, Francisco, who represents Cuban artists and photographers living on the island and who is Cuban himself. He, in turn, first learned about Juan Antonio while reading Cuba’s state newspaper, Granma, in August of 2005. The article in the “Culture” section of Granma introduced the thirty year old Juan Antonio to the Cuban public for the first time, celebrating the opening of his first solo exhibition, “Ecos Pueriles” (“Childish Echoes”) at the Yoruba Cultural Center Gallery, located just on the edge of Habana Vieja. My mission was to track down Juan Antonio Picasso during my upcoming visit and learn a little bit more about him. What did his work look like in person? Would he be interested in representation outside of Cuba? Francisco’s interest in Picasso was not so much in his name, although to say that one is not at all interested in a name like Picasso would be untruthful, but rather in Picasso’s self-declared identity as an Afro-Cuban artist and his commitment to representing distinctly Afro-Cuban themes in his work.

That October, during my trip to Havana, I began looking for Juan Antonio Picasso in the way that anyone looks for anything they need in Latin America and the Caribbean: word of mouth. Cubans are famous for their ability to “conseguir,” or to come up with what one needs; the trick is, the person doing the asking must be willing to wait. I took what I believed to be a logical approach, starting at the Yoruba Cultural Center Gallery. I stepped up to the reception desk and asked the young woman posted there if she could introduce me to the director of the gallery. “Ella no se encuentra hoy,” the receptionist replied. “She’s tired, so she did not come to work today. You could try again tomorrow.” I returned the next day at a punctual 10:00 AM and asked the receptionist, a different woman this time, if I could meet the director of the gallery. No, the receptionist insisted gently, the director was still tired and no one else ran the gallery in her absence. This time, though, I was motivated to “conseguir.” I could not return the next day, as I would be flying home. This was my last chance to get in touch with Picasso.

“Mira,” I said to the receptionist, “Tomorrow I will be leaving the country. I have a rather urgent need to contact Juan Antonio Picasso. Would you happen to have any contact information for him?” In the States, walking into a gallery and asking for an artist’s personal telephone number, home address, or e-mail would be the equivalent of asking for the President’s direct line. It simply is not done; the gallery mediates all contact. I felt certain that my approach would not work, and so it was with absolute surprise and relief when the receptionist rifled through a drawer looking for a small address book and without explaining what she was doing, picked up the phone. On the other end was the resting gallery director; did she happen, the receptionist asked politely, to have Picasso’s phone number handy? She did not, and I was not to meet Picasso on that trip. I left with the receptionist’s assurance that she would “personally ensure” that my e-mail was delivered to Picasso, but I was not at all confident that I would be any closer to finding Picasso until my next trip, scheduled for May 2006.

It was with surprise, then, when two days after my return home that I opened our e-mail and found a message from an address we did not recognize, subject line: “De Picasso Cuba” (“From Cuba Picasso”). The receptionist had been able to “conseguir” the contact with Picasso! This first of e-mails, only one of many that have been exchanged since then, was characteristically short, humble, and yet assertive, clearly anticipating and warding off any potential comparisons or pressures by saying:

“…espero que se presente la oportunidad en que pueda conocerla y que podamos emprender nuevos proyectos siempre respetando mi estilo, tematica y soportes con los cuales mas me he identificado….-Picasso” “…I await the opportunity for you to know my work in person and to undertake new projects, always respecting my style, themes, and media with which I have identified….-Picasso”

That opportunity came in May 2006, when I traveled to Cuba for the third time. After months of friendly correspondence between Francisco and Picasso, the two had developed a mutual appreciation of one another’s work, values, and interests, and had agreed that my upcoming visit would be the opportunity to discuss details about a US exhibit and, if all went well, to prepare Picasso’s works for transport for his first show in the United States. We agreed upon a date. I would finally be meeting Cuba’s most publicized “Black Picasso.”

Getting to Juan Antonio Picasso’s home in the Boyeros section of Havana is no small task. First of all, to go to Boyeros is to realize just how large the city is. Second, if one wants to experience the Cuban way of getting there, you have a few options: “buscar un pon” (hitch a ride by standing on the side of the highway that runs from the interior of Havana towards the Jose Marti Airport); “montar un camello” (board a “camel” bus, packed to the brim and overflowing—literally—with Cubans, some of whom are on the outside of the bus and hanging on for dear life yet making that look so effortless, and others who are hanging on to the bus bumper with one hand and their bicycle handlebars with the other); or to take a Panataxi (state taxi) or one of Havana’s miracle cars, the 1940s and 1950s American models that are still running thanks to Cubans’ ingenuity and magic-making. Between my trip to Picasso’s and back, I did all three.

Detailed directions are priceless. There are no posted street names in Boyeros, just landmarks, the most important of which is “the big water tower,” which everyone uses as a reference point. The taxi driver simply decided he didn’t feel like driving around and looking for Picasso’s home anymore, and told me politely but firmly to get out of the car, leaving me without so much as a glance, on a corner beneath the water tower. I tried to follow Picasso’s not-so-detailed directions, but kept getting lost in the maze of streets; my feet were tired and dusty. I found a pay phone in the most unlikely of places and made a call to ask Picasso whether he could direct me from where I was, just north of the water tower. He offered a new set of directions, as cryptic and confusing as the previous one, and wished me luck. I ventured to ask if he could meet me at the water tower and we could walk to his home together, but he said he was sure I could figure it out on my own. Given that Cuba is not a country that is particularly taken with celebrities, and that no such thing as a Hollywood-type “star map” exists—at least to my knowledge—in Cuba, I couldn’t exactly knock on anyone’s door and query whether they could point me in the direction of Picasso’s home. Slightly annoyed, I plodded on, and finally, without ceremony, found myself in front of Picasso’s building. I must have stuck out because there he was on his balcony and called out “¡Oye!” After months, miles, and mazes, I had made it.

Juan Antonio Picasso lives in a neat-as-a-pin apartment. His art adorns the walls, but this is more of necessity than self-admiration. Like many artists, he produces more work than he can store, and despite the increasingly busy exhibition schedule that carries his work to various Cuban cities, as well as the increasing interest of the international press, Picasso is very careful about where his work goes. He is polite, offering rich black Cuban espresso to me while we look at and talk about his most recent works, but I sense a bit of weariness and wariness about him already, a bit early for a typical artist’s career trajectory. Quite simply, he wants to make art. As his name, his story, and his work become disseminated more widely, the demands on his time become more intense and the profit-seeking prospectors more numerous . CNN, Reuters, and other international media outlets have, quite literally, been knocking down his door. Articles have been published in the US, Mexico, and Germany, among other countries. Interviewers are interested in his name, of course, and are inquisitive about the fact that he is an artist who is mostly self-taught in a country where most professional artists have years of academic training that has refined their natural talents. His independent study has been supplemented, in the past three years, with formal apprenticeships and tutor relationships with contemporary Cuban master painters and sculptors. Early interviews with the press were more detailed and enthusiastic, but in more recent interviews Picasso’s answers about his work are sometimes abrupt and frustratingly vague. This is not his intention, he says, but simply due to the fact that he prefers painting more than public appearances. Also, he has quickly tired of the predictable questions about his lineage and the degree of influence his famous ancestor has exerted on his work. Like many artists, he admires Pablo’s work and feels inspired by it. But for Juan Antonio, it is his art, he says, that speaks for him.

What his art says is, like most art, clear to some viewers, and requires more context for others. Juan Antonio Picasso’s paintings are always infused with Afro-Cuban symbols and ideas. While some of those symbols may be common and somewhat transparent—the cowrie shell or a mask, for instance—others are more opaque and can open multiple layers of interpretation and meaning. Is the conch shell with a rudder silently signaling a return to Africa? Do ladders signify transcendence or the impossibility of climbing past a fixed point? Picasso will not decode the works for the viewer. He prefers this ambiguity, encouraging each to see his or her own experience and meaning in his work.

North American art aficionados will have the chance to do just that this fall, as four of Picasso’s works will be part of “Luz y Sombra: Contemporary Cuban Photography, Painting, and Drawing,” an exhibit opening at Casa Frela Gallery in New York City on August 5 and running through September 2. This exhibit will serve as a preview to Picasso’s first US solo exhibit, which will take place in 2007. Viewers will see for themselves Cuba’s “Black Picasso” and how his work carries forward the name of the great master, but is, true to Pablo Picasso’s own style, ever-evolving, both influencing and being influenced by, his own time, experiences, and culture.