Baruj Salinas

Baruj Salinas (July 6, 1935 – August 18, 2024) was a Cuban-American contemporary visual artist and architect. He is recognized as a central figure in the establishment of the modern Latin American art market in South Florida.

Background Salinas' family is of Sephardic Jewish origins. His ancestors came from a small salt mining town in northern Spain and they derive their name from these origins with "sal" meaning salt in Spanish. They resettled to Silibria, Turkey, another small town, following the 1492 expulsion of the Jews in Spain. They remained in Turkey until the Greco-Turkish Wars of the early 20th century, after which they emigrated first to Marseille, France in 1918 and then to Cuba in 1920, within the area of Old Havana, which had a substantial Jewish community.

By age eleven, Salinas had begun painting landscapes based on his observations of scenery in Cuba. This was followed by scenes of life and people in Havana such as fish salesmen, ice cream salesmen, and children on buses. These evolved into busier market scenes that he would sketch in person and apply paint to afterwards. His early works were made in his childhood bedroom as he did not have a studio at the time and he first exhibited his works at his school. At fourteen, he attended the Círculo de Bellas Artes behind the National Capitol Building in Havana and was the only teenager in attendance, surrounded by older professional painters. In 1960 he exhibited at the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Havana as well as the Witte Museum in San Antonio and was well received. Once in Miami, he first mainly worked professionally as an architect to sustain himself but also continued to paint. Salinas had the advantage of being already fluent in English by that point, but still struggled economically as most early exiles had, particularly in the arts. By 1963-64 he was selling his works for as little as $25 during the period well before the establishment of an organized market for Cuban art in South Florida. GALA members (Salinas, Enrique Riveron, Rafael Soriano, José María Mijares, Roxanna McAllister, and Osvaldo Gutiérrez) would gather bi-monthly to discuss their individual art projects, sponsorships, and organize bi-annual group exhibitions. In 1969 he received the Cintas Fellowship for art and then for a second time in 1970, which Salinas has credited in interviews with giving him the initiative to ultimately quit architecture as his main profession and fully dedicate himself to fine art in the 1970s. Salinas also introduced González to Jesus and Marta Permuy, in 1969. It also saw his color palette shift toward more subtle and neutral tones with a strong emphasis on whites and grays, often inspired by and symbolizing clouds. Salinas would call this concept “The Language of the Clouds,” which became a series of works exploring this color palette and approach to abstraction. During his Spain period, Salinas would also explore the pictographs of China and Japan as well as foreign alphabets including Greek, Iberian, and Hebrew. These alphabets reflected the influence of the writers he was exposed to and his interest in reducing patterns to fundamentals and abstracting them with his palette of white, which he associated with purity and cleanliness, particularly in the context of its prevalence in Barcelona.

From 1993 to 1998, and again in 2000 and 2002–03, Salinas served as the Arts Coordinator for the International Committee for Human Rights in Miami. He was a fine art professor at Miami Dade College and began teaching in the MDC Interamerican campus in 2001.

From 2015 to 2017 Salinas was recruited to be part of The Torah Project which was then compiled in the book The Torah Project Humash. The event was also significant for marking the first time that a Pope had blessed a Jewish document in the history of the Catholic Church.

Death Salinas died in Coral Gables, Florida, on August 18, 2024, at the age of 89.

Style Salinas’ artwork and architecture design have their foundation in mid-century movements which he has interpreted and updated with a number of personal influences and themes. As an architect, Salinas is part of the Modernist tradition and before his retirement had prominently utilized concrete-heavy designs that drew influence from Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, Le Corbusier, and Erich Mendelsohn.

Salinas’ art is noted for its spiritual, philosophical, cultural, and symbolic layerings. He is identified with the Abstract Expressionism movement, having first been exposed to the work of its leading members (Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Zao Wou-Ki) while at Kent State University. Luis believes Salinas' early experiments with color and abstraction were in the general vein of Kandinsky and that Salinas later developed a style akin to the "calculated spontaneity of Zen brushwork." These include multiple exhibitions in Cuba, the United States, Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Argentina, and elsewhere. His work has featured in several significant international fairs and exhibitions, including Art Basel and the Biennale of Graphic Arts. Arte Al Día Internacional Magazine, Art in America, Art News, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald His artwork has also been discussed and featured on several books of Contemporary American art, Cuban, Latin American, and Jewish art.

He was the subject of the book BARUJ SALINAS, first published in Spanish in 1979 and republished in 1988, when it was translated into English and French.

In 2000, his career was the subject of the film Baruj Salinas, 21st Century Master.

In 2019 he participated in the second “Art + Architecture” exhibition in Coral Gables, Florida, where he was the main featured artist alongside his late fellow Grupo GALA member José Mijares.

In 2022, The American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora hosted a 50-year retrospective of Salinas' career from May to August. The exhibition, titled Baruj Salinas: 1972-2022, included works from several of Salinas' most high-profile series, including The Language of the Clouds and The Torah Project.

Awards, recognition, and legacy Throughout his career, Salinas has received numerous international fine art awards for his paintings. They include: Best Transparent Watercolor award from the Texas Watercolor Society (San Antonio, 1964), First Prize for Watercolor in the Hortt Memorial Exhibition at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art (1968), the Cintas Fellowship (twice; 1969, 1970), the Prize to Excellency at the VII Grand Prix International de Peinture in Cannes (1971), First Prize at the IV Pan American Exhibition in Miami, First Prize in the VI Latin American Print Biennial (Puerto Rico, 1983), and the National Prize of Engraving from the National Calcography of Madrid (1996).

Salinas' artwork has been sold on fine art brokerage institutions including Christie's, Artnet, and others.

Contemporary art collector Dr. Arturo F. Mosquera, stated to the Miami Herald that Salinas is “one of the most prolific and important painters of the third generation [La Vieja Guardia] of Cuban artists.”

One year following his death, Salinas was honored with an official Proclamation by the City of Coral Gables. The Proclamation was part of the city's Centennial in 2025 and declared Salinas one of the city's "greatest cultural treasures" in recognition of his enduring cultural impact, contributions to abstraction, and the international reach and influence of his work in the 20th and 21st centuries. It also proclaimed Salinas 90th birthday as "Baruj Salinas Day" in the city.

In March 2026, Salinas entered into the permanent collection of the Tampa Museum of Art, marking his first museum acquisition since his death. In the announcement, TMA Executive Director Michael Tomor explained the acquisition's importance stating "Baruj Salinas’ work represents an important chapter in the story of modern and contemporary art in the Americas," while TMA Curator of Modern and Contemporary art Joanna Robotham noted "Adding this work to the Tampa Museum of Art’s permanent collection strengthens our ability to share the story of the Cuban diaspora and the global impact of artists who have shaped the visual language of contemporary art." The archives include records and correspondences with several of Salinas' artistic relationships, including Joan Miró, Alexander Calder, Rufino Tamayo, Antoni Tàpies, Ramón Alejandro, Roberto Estopiñán, Rafael Soriano, and Ricardo Pau-Llosa. Salinas is also included in the LUX Digital Archives of Yale University.

Collections Salinas' work is featured in several international fine art collections including: The Americas Collection Coral Gables, Florida The Art Institute of Chicago The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel The Villa du Parc Center for Contemporary Art, Annemasse, France The Beit Uri and Rami Nehoshtan Museum, Israel The Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona The NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Florida The Alvin Sherman Library, Fort Lauderdale, Florida The Permuy Collection, Coral Gables, Florida The Pinedo Collection, Miami, Florida The Lowe Art Museum, Coral Gables, Florida