The Great Butcher I and The Great Butcher II, Oil on canvas, dyptich format, 48” x 30”

Alejandro Anreus (b. 1960, Havana): Though he began his career as an artist, Anreus is now an art historian and poet and is professor of art history at William Paterson University. For many years, he worked as curator at the Montclair Art Museum and the Jersey City Museum. He regularly participates in panels and seminars on Latin American art. Among the exhibitions he has organized are Ben Shahn and The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti at the Jersey City Museum and Juan Sánchez: Printed Convictions, Subversions/Affirmations: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and A Survey and Latino Visions II at the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark, NJ. He has been published widely in art magazines such as Art Nexus, Canícula and Encuentro, and has written many exhibition catalogues. He was editor and essayist for Orozco in Gringoland: The Years in New York,and he is the editor of Mexican Muralism A Critical History with Robin Adele Greeley and Leonard Folgarait. Anreus received a Ph.D. in art history from the Graduate Center at CUNY. (CINTAS for Visual Arts, 1979-80, 1986-87)

Reinaldo Arenas (b. 1943, Oriente countryside – d. 1990 New York City): Arenas’ extensive body of work – novels, poetry, essays and plays – has been translated into a dozen languages and acclaimed the world over. He first won critical attention with the novel Celestino antes del alba, translated as Singing from the Well. The novel was followed by El mundo alucinante (Hallucinations), which was banned in Cuba but published in Mexico in 1969 and honored in France with the Medici Prize as the finest foreign novel of the year. He served two years in a Cuban prison and came to the United States on the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Among his other novels are Otra vez del mar, (Farewell to the Sea), El Central: A Cuban Sugar Mill, and Old Rosa: A Novel in Two Stories. The director Julian Schnabel captured the writers’ life in the 2000 film Before Night Falls, based on Arenas’ book of the same title. (Cintas for literature, 1981-82, 1986-87)

Henry Bravo (CINTAS for Architecture & Design, 1986-87)

Edwin Castañeda (CINTAS for Visual Arts, 1986-87)

Humberto Chávez (b. Havana, 1937) After graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the New School for Social Research in New York, Chávez pursued a career as a sculptor. He has received scholarships and fellowships from the Bronx Council on the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has participated in group exhibitions at the Intar Latin American Gallery, the Bronx Museum of Art and the Alternative Museum in New York, among others. His work is in the collections of the Islip Museum in Long Island, Foster Securities and the Prudential Life Insurance Corporation. (CINTAS for Visual Arts, 1986-87)

Homenaje A Barcelona, Mes Que Mai,1965, Mixed media on canvas, 31.5” x 46”

Miguel Cubiles (b. 1937, Caibarien) After arriving in the United States in 1961, Cubiles studied art at Miami-Dade Community College and the University of Miami. He moved to Mexico in 1980, where he lives, works and frequently shows his work. He has also exhibited in several countries in Europe, the United States and Japan. His work – which includes paintings, engravings and ceramics as well as sculpture – is in the permanent collections of the Fundación Joan Miró in Barcelona, the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña in San Juan, the Japan Printmakers Association in Tokyo, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Sevilla, the Miami-Dade Public Library, and the Museo de Arte y Cultura and the Museo Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, among others. (CINTAS for Visual Arts, 1986-87)

Carlos A. Díaz: A poet and novelist, Díaz is the founder of the editorial house La Torre de Papel. (Cintas for literature, 1986-87)

Eugenio Espinosa The artist Eugenio Espinosa received a Weir Farm Resident Artist grant and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His work was featured at the Art Gallery of the College of New Jersey in an exhibition titled The Political is the Personal – Perspectives from the Latin Diaspora, and at The Visual Imaginary of Latinas/os in New Jersey at the Kenkeleba Gallery in Manhattan. Espinosa holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers; he is on the art faculty at SUNY Rockland Community College (CINTAS for Visual Arts, 1986-87)

Roberto G. Fernández (b. 1951, Sagua la Grande): A poet and playwright, Fernández is a professor of modern languages at Florida State University in Tallahassee. His books in Spanish include Cuentos sin rumbo and La montaña rusa. In English, he has written Raining Backwards and Holy Radishes, a satirical novel set in the Florida Everglades. (Cintas for literature, 1986-87)

Faceless Even Now, Clay, paint, 29.5" x 18.25" x 5.125"

Mario Petrirena (b.1953, Union de Reyes). Petrirena is a visual artist whose work is primarily sculptural, although he also works in collage. He is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner and the Georgia Council for the Arts. His work is included in the collections of the Fort Lauderdale Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, the Rubin Foundation in New York, and the High Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in Atlanta. His work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, including Convergence, Beijing, curated by Feng Boyi and Marilyn Kiang. Petrirena’s work was included in Outside Cuba/Fuera de Cuba, Cuba-USA and Breaking Barriers. (CINTAS for 1986-87 and 1991-92)

Mario J. Torroella (b. 1935, Havana): The design director of the Cambridge architecture firm HMFH, Torroella oversees the design of the firm’s projects, specializing in schools. His work has earned him and HMFM several awards, including the William Caudill Citation from American School & University Magazine, and four Walter Taylor Awards from the AASA and the AIA. Torroella is also an artist, and his paintings and tapestries have been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, including the Biennale Internationale d’Art in France and the Barcelona International Art Forum of 1989. Torroella has a Master’s degree in architecture from Harvard University. (CINTAS for Architecture & Design, 1986-87)

Jorge Valls Arango (b. 1933): A poet and political activist, Vallsis the author of Twenty Years and Forty Days: Life in a Cuban Prison, about his experiences as a political prisoner. His poetry books include Donde estoy no hay luz y está enrejado. (Cintas for literature, 1986-87)

Doris Vila (b. Miami): Working at the intersection of art and technology, Vila travels widely to Europe and Latin America to exhibit her 3D videos and responsive installations. Her solo exhibitions include Theatermachine, an interactive audio/video and environment installation in Bonn, Germany in 1995; The Book of Air, also in Bonn in 1993; Paradox Beach, a permanent installation of a children’s learning game at the Staten Island Children’s Museum in 2005, and Every Time I Open My Eyes I See Things, at the Butler Institute of American Art in 2008. She has had several fellowships at the MacDowell Colony for the Arts, received an InterActiva symposium award for interactive holographic video environment work, and was a fellow in the Academy of Media Art in Cologne, Germany. She has served as consultant to Canada's Department of Energy and to DuPont Inc. on holographic projects. In 1999, the Center for Holographic Art granted her a two-week residency to work on a holographic book. Vila has a Bachelor’s degree in art from Hunter College and also attended the University of California, Berkley.  (Cintas for art, 1986-87)