FIDELIO PONCE DE LEON :
Fidelio Ponce de León was the pseudonym of
Alfredo Fuentes Pons, a Cuban painter. A native of Camagüey, he studied at the
San Alejandro Academy in Havana from 1913 until 1918. Along with Antonio
Gattorno, Victor Manuel, Amelia Peláez, and Wifredo Lam, he is considered part
of the "Vanguardia" movement in Cuban art; however, unlike many of
his contemporaries he never studied in Europe, and so had comparatively little
contact with European modernism.
Nevertheless, he listed among his influences Amedeo
Modigliani, along with El Greco, Rembrandt, and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. His
paintings are also reminiscent of those of Edvard Munch. Later in life Ponce de
León contracted tuberculosis; he died in Havana on 19 February 1949.The Museum
of Modern Art is among the museums containing examples of his work.
Fidelio Ponce de León's style was one of the
most singular styles and iconography of his generation. His paintings such
as La Familia ("The Family") and Niños ("Children",
1938), reflect Cuban society of the 1930s, and offer a contrasting view to the
idealized vision seen in the art of some of the other artists. They are tragic
images about poverty, sickness, and alienation.
Even when painting children in the midst of
nature, as in Niños, a subject long associated with beauty and hope, his
treatment of the landscape and the children's facial expressions suggest
aridity and sadness.
Ponce's desperate economic situation and unruly
life matched the general socio-economic situation of Cuba in the 1930s, and
thus his paintings’ expressions of doom transcend the personal and may be said
to symbolize the national mood of that time.
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