One of Cuba’s noted contemporary painters is visiting Madison, highlighting a special connection between our city and the island nation.
Orestes Larios Zaak, an artist known for paintings depicting the fragility of the environment, will be exhibiting and selling work at the Goodman Community Center until Sept. 22.
Robert Skloot, a UW-Madison professor emeritus who helped organize the event, says Larios’ visit is a significant cultural event for Madison. The exhibition is sponsored by the Madison-Camaguey Sister City Association (MCSCA), of which Skloot is a member. In the early 2000s, Larios helped coordinate a sister-city relationship between Madison’s Beth Israel Center and the small Jewish community of Camaguey, Cuba.
“Larios might be called an artistic ecologist — an advocate for caring for and enjoying the world at the mercy of exploitation and destruction,” says Skloot, who taught in the theater and drama and Jewish studies departments. “His paintings are formal and delicate, colorful and simple.”
In addition to being a well-known teacher, Larios also is the director of Galeria Larios, an artist workshop and exhibition space that displays the work of young artists from Cuba and other countries from around the world.
Larios last visited Madison in 2009 with his sculptor colleague Gregorio Perez Escobar. Skloot says artistic exchanges have been tough to arrange because of difficult relations between Cuba and the United States. But as diplomacy thaws, more possibilities are emerging.
“It’s these kinds of person-to-person contacts that sister city programs were designed for, and the reciprocal engagements honor Madison’s initiative and determination to continue its vibrant 20-year connection to Camaguey,” says Skloot.
The artist and his wife, Maria Ofelia Granela Suarez, will be present at a public reception on Sept. 11 from 2-5 p.m. at the Goodman Community Center, 149 Waubesa Street.
