Luis Marin

Luis Marín (born 1948) is a Cuban Neo-expressionist painter and visual artist. He has been active internationally in the arts since the 1980s and is featured in the permanent collections of several prominent fine art institutions including the Museum of Latin American Art and Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale.

Life and career

Luís Domingo Marín Rodriguez was born in Havana, Cuba on December 20, 1948. He spent his early life in the Cuban capital during a period of great social and political unrest resulting from the Cuban Revolution. Marín showed an early interest and inclination toward visual and performance art. After initially training to be an actor, he was later accepted into and graduated from the prestigious Academia San Alejandro, Cuba's leading art academy, and also studied History of Art in the University of Havana. He began exhibiting his art in 1983 when he participated in a group exhibition titled "Salon Plaza ‘83," at the Galería Casa de la Cultura Plaza in Havana. In 1986 he held his first solo exhibition, titled "Expressions," at Havana's Domingo Revenet Gallery. The following year in 1987 Marín left Cuba for Madrid, Spain where he lived and worked for two years. Since relocating to the United States, Marín would gain critical recognition and continue to exhibit in high-profile American art markets as well as internationally in both individual and group exhibitions. Notable examples from his first three years in the US include his exhibitions at the Inter-American Gallery of Miami-Dade College (1991) and the Cuban Museum of Art and Culture (1992).

Exhibitions

Since beginning to exhibit his artwork in 1983, Marín has participated in over 50 exhibitions and has exhibited in several prominent international art markets including Madrid, Miami, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove, and New York City.

Style

Luis Marín is considered a Neo-Expressionist. As such, has exhibited his work alongside other renown Cuban artists including Hugo Consuegra and Baruj Salinas. Marín has also been supported by leading Cuban art critics and scholars. Smithsonian Institution associate, historian and curator Giulio V. Blanc compared him to Willem de Kooning. His career has also been covered by Latin American art media, such as El Nuevo Herald, Art Nexus, Latin American Art Magazine. The catalog for his 2004 Cuban individual exhibition Las Huellas de mi Ciudad, his first in Cuba since leaving in 1987, is included within The Princeton University Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera. the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, the Municipal Museum of Modern Art in Cuenca, Ecuador el Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano in Lima, Peru, and the Housatonic Museum of Art in Connecticut. His art is also featured in several educational institutions, such as Antioch University, and the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic. Marín's artwork is also held in the Cuban Embassy in Santo Domingo, the Consulate of Cuba in Panama City, Banvivienda Bank in Panama City, and the historic Villa Riso in Rio de Janeiro.