Cundo Bermudez, Cuban (1914 - )

 Born in La Habana, he studied there at the Academia de San Alejandro (early 1930s) and in 1938 at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City , where he became familiar with the work of the muralists. He had his first one-man exhibition at the Lyceum in Havana in 1942. In his own words: 

"When I was young I wanted to be a writer; although I studied at San Alejandro, I never intended to take art seriously. The thirties was a decade of labor strikes and university closings; the economic situation was terrible by the time I went to Mexico in 1938. I was never awarded a scholarship in Cuba ; I have never had material ambitions, and have been very independent. When the news come of Batista's coup d'etat in 1952, I was vacationing in Europe . I returned home, and dedicated myself full time to painting. It has been like that ever since. I have fun at what I do; the pleasure I get from painting is vital for me. I enjoy art like Mozart enjoyed his music. Some people are concerned over philosophic postulates, over universal chaos, over the atomic bomb; for me, painting is a celebration of form and color, and nothing more. I left Cuba absolutely disillusioned, perhaps because I had believed totally in the revolution. Between 1962 and 1967, the government obliterated me; I was neither harassed nor persecuted, simply ignored. Exile has affected the individual, not the artist; when I arrived in Puerto Rico , I felt as if I had reached a region of Cuba I had not known previously. In a way, I still feel uprooted, for I do not feel at home anywhere."