Stirring, sensuous, quizzical, and bursting with talent, Cuba’s fine artists hail from an island of resourcefulness, tapping into found materials, generations of tools and enduring resilience.   Among them is Dairan Fernández de la Fuente, whose wood-block prints tell stories in a signature Art Deco palette. From his studio Taller de Gráfica Experimental, the master employs traditional tools and techniques of the country’s late 19th century cigar label makers. With immersive colors and understated wit, de la Fuente elevates famously bold poster graphics celebrating the island’s once robust luxury travel, music and film industries long given way to government propaganda. It’s not a stretch to say that modern Cuban history is chronicled by ever present poster art pasted around cities, towns and rural areas. From the American mobster casino tourism of the 1940s-1950s, Castro’s rise and the attending US embargo on the island, through the tight restrictions imposed on citizens from 1959 until today, Cuba’s collection of public wall art is dynamic. Sculpting woodblock, painting canvas, and penning ink on paper with his refined, simple strokes, de la Fuente delivers powerful messages between the lines. He takes the viewer on a carefree motorbike tour of the bucolic countryside, with a grown man playing in a bathtub with toy boats (real ones are scarce), to supple women and muscular men in 1950s attire, relaxing at the shore. Indeed, current Cuban 2025 delivers deprivation and deep poverty reminiscent of the early 1990s “Special Period” when Soviet support collapsed and the dependent Cuban economy did, too. Blackouts are now prolonged and pervasive; fuel and food are unaffordable and often unavailable. Life is even more restricted.  “Much of my work deals with the theme of immigration, departures and displacement,” explains the artist, whose own family emigrated from Spain to Cuba. We have a small collection of his richly pigmented and rarely created oils on canvas along with two dozen of his signed and numbered woodblocks. Elegant and electric, the works capture real and imagined Cuban experiences with everyday men and women, evoking the familiar. “Some of my most recurrent imagery refers to separation, distance, nostalgia, anguish and loss,” says the artist. Thinking about old friends and long-separated families, de la Fuente shows the agency, movement, and migration Cubans have longed for over many generations. Join us for the Opening Thursday, April 17th, 6pm – 7:30pm at Amy Kaslow Gallery.