"I am a painter of ambiguous abstractionism and certain anatomical themes. My characteristic images and themes are objects from an unreal world of aggression and conflict, in which mechanical parts appear together with anatomical ones, under the surgeon’s scalpel, under the introspection of a curious mind, and in certain tormented zones."
- Agustín Fernández
In the realm of art, where the boundaries between reality and the subconscious blur, Agustín Fernández becomes an enigma. Born in Havana in 1928, and finding his final canvas in New York in 2006, Fernández stands as a major modernist figure among Latin American and Cuban artists. His work defies easy categorization and transcends the boundaries of traditional artistic movements, embodying a perpetual navigation of in-betweens.
Inspired by the political tumult of his life, Fernández is known for his ambiguous and precariously balanced forms, erotic overtones, surreal juxtapositions, and metallic palettes. Although Fernández never explicitly aligned himself with Surrealism or strictly erotic art, his work emerged from the subconscious realm and resulted in paintings where mechanical parts intertwine with anatomical elements characterized by an underlying psychosexual innuendo. His often large-scale paintings and drawings are confrontational in that respect, their ambiguous and charged imagery threatening to enter the very space of the viewer. As Fernández’s art unfolded, it embraced the complexities of a world increasingly defined by industrialization and dehumanization. Thus, his work engages with the dichotomy between the body as a source of pleasure and as a tool of work.