Havana Gallery

Address: 1139 W. Webster Ave., Chicago, IL 60614

Web Site: www.havanagallery.com

Phone: 773.549.2498

Hours: 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday and Friday; 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday; 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday

Celebrating 10 years of operation this year, Havana Gallery is a unique Chicago gallery in that it handles only Cuban artists. A few of the artists live in Chicago, and some live in Europe, but the majority are native Cubans, most originating from Havana and the Pinar del Rio area in the west of the country.

The Havana Gallery consists of one huge, bright room, which is very modern and welcoming. Director Allison Hill is warm and engaging, and a fine artist herself. She readily shares conversation and thoughts with gallery visitors. Perhaps it is the bright, warm quality of the paintings, but one instantly feels a bit sunnier upon entering Havana Gallery.

“We travel to Cuba once or twice a year and meet artists," Hill said. "We look for variety and professionalism in our artists – something fresh and genuine. In Cuba, the artists know one another, so we get introductions from artist to artist and get to view a wide range of work. We select artists who are well-known in Cuba, as well as some newcomers whose work we like.”

The Cuban art featured at Havana is wildly imaginative and, true to its Carribean heritage, it is usually warm and brightly colored. Surrealistic elements are common, as well as post-cubistic styles which hearken from Picasso. A taste of folk art often appears, but there is nothing primitive about the work. As Cuba is a country that still has elements of a repressive regime, overtly political images tend to be absent. However, a few artists, notably Jose Gonzalez, in his Rauschenberg-like collages, strongly hint at a dark strain of cultural miasma.

Otoño (Autumn) by Tania Chang
Oil on canvas; 19" by 24"; 2004

Jorge Barreiro’s work often features tall, slim figures floating, sleeping, playing and listening to music in various stucco-paneled apartments, evoking an air of listless urban afternoons, filled with daydreams. Alejander Lazo’s paintings have a quality akin to a Caribbean Paul Klee. His linear, post-cubistic drawing style conjures up something akin to cosmic graffiti where eyes and smiles float above fields of earth covered in fish bones and other half-abstract detritus.

Isolita Lemonta paints figures which are half vine-like and half human. Her plant men and woman seem dipped in moonlight and the colors of tropical flowers. They wander and muse, lost in thought in the midst of pastel colored jungles. Ileana Mulet’s work includes landscapes of cities and back roads. Her trees and buildings are painted in rough, but controlled, brushwork that is suggestive of the stucco walls she often paints. Her landscapes are of charming unique places that seem to come from a rich childhood memory.

Currently, the sale of Cuban art is permitted by an exception from the U.S. State Department, but the lack of diplomatic relations means the Cuban artists living in Cuba can almost never attend openings, a situation which borders on ridiculous and that should be corrected. As a means of opening the door culturally between the U.S. and Cuba, this correspondent believes the government should consider granting visas to allow artists to attend openings in this country.

All the same, Havana Gallery openings are lively affairs, with varieties of Cuban finger food and punch, and even the occasional mojito on the rocks.