Rafael Soriano

Rafael Soriano: Other Worlds Within, a Sixty-Year Retrospective will be on view at the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum from January 29 through March 27, 2011. A preview lecture and reception will be held on January 28, 2011 from 7 to 10 p.m. The lecture will be given by Alejandro Anreus.

Born in Cuba, Soriano is one of the major Latin American artists of his generation. Soriano broke with regional and folkloric themes that once dominated Cuban art in the mid-1920s. He first mastered geometric abstraction as a style in the 1950s, but by the late 1960s had defined his signature approach to painting. His work embodies a style best described as “Oneiric Luminism,” combining a purely abstract form of light, form space, and shadow with an interest in poetic and metaphysical impulses.

Born in 1920 in the town of Cidra in the province of Matanzas, Soriano manifested an early inclination for painting. After completing seven years of study at Havana’s prestigious Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro, he graduated in 1943 as professor of painting, drawing, and sculpture. He then returned to Matanzas where he taught visual arts for close to two decades. Soriano was one of the founders, and later director, of the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Matanzas, the most important art school in Cuba outside of Havana.

In 1962 Soriano went into exile, settling in Miami with his wife, Milagros, and daughter Hortensia. He worked as a graphic designer and occasionally taught, first at the Catholic Welfare Bureau and later at the Cuban Cultural Program of the University of Miami.

Soriano’s works are included in major public collections, among them Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes/Havana, Zimmerli Museum/Rutgers University, Denver Art Museum, Archer Huntington Gallery/Univeristy of Texas-Austin, UM’s Lowe Art Museum, Museum of Art/Fort Lauderdale, Museum of the Americas/OAS-Washington DC, Galería Arte Moderno/Santo Domingo, and Zea Museum of Art/Medellín.

The exhibition is organized by the Lowe Art Museum and curated by Jesus Rosado. Sponsorship is provided by MBF Healthcare Partners.

The Lowe Art Museum is located on the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus at 1301 Stanford Drive. Gallery and museum store hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, 12 to 4 p.m.; closed Monday. Regular Admission (not including special events) is $10; $5 for seniors and non-UM students; free for Lowe Art Museum members, UM students, faculty and staff, and children under 12. For more information, call 305-284-3535 or visit www.lowemuseum.org.