Lopez Oliva was born in Manzanillo, Cuba in 1947. The carnivals in his home town deeply influenced his painter’s vision to include masks, actors and figurative signs in his artistic language, ultimately embracing a complex metric of transformative identities. His work conveys a feeling of unmitigated longing for an undefined utopia, a yearning made strong through an exuberant sense of illusion, as well as the hope that it evokes. Finished with unmistakably Caribbean motifs in a visual pantheon of stages, embroidered curtains and costumes, the paintings unequivocally identify Lopez Oliva as one of the most highly regarded artists of Cuba today.
