Ramon Unzueta

Ramón Unzueta (July 14, 1962 – October 5, 2012) was a Cuban-Spanish painter most active in the United States, Spain, and France. In the United States he was a significant figure in the emergence of the Little Havana art market in Miami during the early 21st century. In his lifetime Unzueta received contemporary cultural recognition through public honors, media coverage, and high-profile international collaborations and commissions. Since his death, his work and career have been the subject of analysis through published literature, film, and posthumous exhibitions. Unzueta's work is featured in the permanent collections of the Frost Art Museum and the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora.

Early life Ramón Unzueta Chávez was born in Havana, Cuba on July 14, 1962, to Ramón Unzueta (Sr.) and Enaida Chávez. He and his sister, Enaida, were raised in the coastal Centro Habana neighborhood of Havana. Their father was a Basque-Spaniard, which contributed significantly to their blended cultural upbringing within Cuba and maintained their cultural roots to Spain.

Unzueta showed creative inclination from an early age and began to paint at the age of eight drawing inspiration from films of the Golden Age of Hollywood, a theme that remained a major influence for the duration of his life and career. In 1972 at the age of ten Unzueta was gifted a sketch pad and tempera paint set by his father, which motivated him to further his early creative development. During this period through the early 1990s, he also experimented with art mediums, including oil, ink, watercolor, pencil, and collage. While in exile Unzueta began to shift from creating art for private use to an extensive exhibiting career as a professional artist alongside his successful career as an illustrator.

Unzueta held his first solo exhibition in April 1993 titled Ramón Unzueta Chavez: Dibujos 1987–1993, in the Galeria La Chatita of Santa Cruz de La Palma, Spain. The exhibition focused on his fine art drawings from his last years in Cuba as well as his first years in Spain.

The following year marked a career turning point in which Unzueta exhibited in the United States for the first time. His first US solo exhibition, titled Crazy As A Coffee Pot, was held in Miami's Gainza Gallery and featured his Cafetera series, which had become a notable and recognizable series of his that found particular resonance with the extensive Cuban exile community in South Florida. To mark his arrival in Miami as an established international artist, Unzueta was awarded the Distinguished Visitor Certificate as well as the Key to the County of Miami-Dade County by the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners. These exhibitions in South Florida raised his profile and laid the foundation to facilitate the 2004 opening of Unzueta Gallery in Miami's Little Havana Arts District. In addition to Unzueta, the gallery also featured work by painters Manolo Rodriguez, Josevelio Rodriguez, Esteban Alvarez-Buylla, and Carlos Manuel Galindo and was frequented by prominent collectors such as philologist and Noticiero Univision national editorial journalist Roberto Uria as well as art patron Marta Permuy.

In the years following the opening of Unzueta Gallery, Unzueta received several prominent commissions. In 2006 Unzueta received two public commissions: the first to create illustrations for the international literary magazine Limon Partido and the second to design the official event poster for Miami-Dade County's Hispanic Heritage Month. That same year he would also exhibit in the Las Palmas International Film Festival Invitational of Gran Canaria, Spain. The film captured his creative process in making a single work dedicated to Spanish poet Federico García Lorca.

Controversy Alongside these developments, there were periods in Unzueta's career in which his work became the focus of controversy. In August 2005, Unzueta Gallery became the center of media attention as a result of a large-scale heist of his work.

Unzueta's Magic realism style led to his being commissioned to produce illustrations for several children's storybooks including: Perfume of Violets, Rabbits are Blue, When Crabs Sting, An Important Day, With my Grandma, and The Messenger Star.

In 1999 Unzueta illustrated the first book of short stories by renown Cuban writer, Zoé Valdés, Los Aretes de la Luna, published by Editorial Everest.

His close association with literary works would also result in his exhibiting his fine art in prominent literary venues such as the Madrid International Book Fair (2000), the Miami International Book Fair (2002), and Books & Books of Coral Gables (2003). He was a key figure in Permuy's late-career art activities in the Permuy House, a designated Coral Gables landmark for its cultural significance. That same year, Valdés dedicated her novel The Weeping Woman to Unzueta's memory.

In 2017 His work was included in Artists For Rights, an exhibition of Cuban art in support of human rights in Cuba.

In 2021 he was the subject of the filmed special Ramón Unzueta: La Vida y el Arte produced by Zoé Valdes. The following year Valdes paid tribute to Unzueta on her website to mark the 10th anniversary of his death.

In 2023, Unzueta's work was the subject of a career-spanning solo exhibition in the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora. The exhibition, titled Ramón Unzueta: From Island to Island, opened on May 20 to mark Cuban Independence Day. Following the retrospective, the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora acquired a work of Unzueta from the Unzueta Estate to add to the museum's permanent collection. In December 2023, a work from Unzueta’s Marineros (Sailors) series was donated to the permanent collection of the Frost Art Museum in memory of Marta Permuy by her grandson, curator Antonio Permuy. The Vasari Project is overseen by the Miami-Dade Public Library System to document artistically significant records pertaining to the Miami-Dade County region from the Post-World War II era through to the present.

Style and analysis Ramon Unzueta's work is considered Magic realism, though he also incorporates elements of Surrealism. Through his career he worked in the mediums of watercolor, nib, pencil, pastel, ink, oil, and collage on paper as well as canvas. Her influence on his art as well as her role as his primary art representative in the United States has been compared to the creative partnership between siblings Theo and Vincent van Gogh. 2010 — Mujeres de Campo Florido, solo exhibition, Unzueta Gallery, Miami, FL. 2016–Presentation of Unzueta: Ramón Unzueta (1962–2012) and retrospective exhibition, Unzueta Gallery, Miami, FL 2023 — Ramón Unzueta: From Island to Island, career- retrospective exhibition, the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, Miami, FL.