Agustín Fernández

The Metamorphosis of Experience

A major new monograph on the Cuban artist Agustín Fernandez

“As a painter I use a realist technique, but the emblems I invent are not real. They are purely imaginative...Painting is a thing of the mind. My realism is not nature, or landscape, or still life, but the psychological world.” - Agustín Fernandez
At the time of his death in 2006, Agustín Fernandez (b. 1928) ranked among Cuba’s most outstanding artists. Defying simple categorization, today his work is most recognizable for its ambiguous and precariously balanced forms, erotic overtones, surreal juxtapositions, and metallic palette. This superbly illustrated book is the first comprehensive study of Fernandez’s work, and includes contributions by renowned critic Donald Kuspit and a team of experts.

Fernandez’ work has been exhibited throughout Europe and North and South america, and is represented in major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work found a wider audience when one of his larger paintings was featured in 1980 Brian de Palma film, Dressed to Kill.

Donald Kuspit is an art critic and professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is a contributing editor at Artforum, Sculpture, and New Art Examiner magazines, the editor of Art Criticism, and the editor of a series on american art and art Criticism for Cambridge University Press. He is the author of numerous articles, exhibition reviews, and catalogue essays, as well as more than twenty books.
Susan Aberth is associate Professor of art history and Director of the art history Program at Bard College in New York. She holds a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles; an MBA from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She specializes in Latin American art history with a particular focus on Surrealism. She is the author of Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art.
Rocío Aranda-Alvarado is Curator at El Museo del Barrio in New York. She specializes in contemporary art and the modern and contemporary art of the Americas, and is also an adjunct faculty member in the art history Department at the City College of New York. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including catalogue essays for the Museum of Modern Art and El Museo del Barrio.
Abby McEwen is assistant Professor of Latin American art at the University of Maryland, College Park. She specializes in modern Latin American art, with particular interests in the arts of twentieth-century Cuba, geometric abstraction and conceptualism generally, and transnational exchange within the Americas. She holds a Ph.D. from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.