Cuban artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello made headlines earlier this year when he became the first Cuban contemporary artist to join the prestigious Pace Gallery program. His work is a vivid alchemy of abstraction and empirical figuration, channeling the vibrant energy of the Caribbean landscape and its people. Focusing on his connection to Cuba, Piñeiro Bello uses painting as a powerful tool of cultural and human resistance—a celebration of nature and life against the destruction and oppression that has long plagued his homeland.
Ahead of the whirlwind that was Miami Art Week, the Observer visited Piñeiro Bello in his studio to delve into the fabric of his exploding canvases and examine how they intersect with his subject matter and the collective narrative of his world.
Located in Little Haiti, his two-room studio vibrates with creative energy; a few days after our visit, he held a private reception with his new gallery there. The space itself is a rich canvas of art, music and literature—a reflection of the artist's synthesis process that seeks to refine and amplify the primal energies of Caribbean culture.
Piñeiro Bello's playful, expansive canvases occupy the liminal space between abstraction and imagination. They arise from deep mental, emotional and spiritual interactions with reality, including the existence of purpose, memories, myth, imagination and symbolic elements. “I've been playing with a lot of things,” he says as we look at an earlier piece that leans heavily on figurative use. “All those methods came together at some point, in an organic combination of abstraction, illustration and symbols.”
The fluidity and mysterious nature of Piñeiro Bello's paintings can evoke the active symbolism of Paul Gauguin and the Nabis. Like these artists, who are known for exploring themes such as dream, fantasy, and spirituality, he deeply explores the emotional and psychological resonance of color. His work is similarly inspired by the unique energy of the landscapes he paints. In his case, the green grass of his native Cuba, the melodious rhythm of his countrymen's music and the sparkling light of the Caribbean serve as fuel for his energetic songs. “I have a strong connection to my Caribbean heritage and culture,” he told the Observer, “so I feed myself on the sun, on the history of painting, on the stories of my friends—it's all part of my process.”
Piñeiro Bello describes his art-making process as a complete surrender to the energies he perceives, allowing them to flow onto the canvas through precise and unconscious gestures. “It's like a transmission, a completely invisible automatism. It's all about the moments of meeting and connecting,” he explained.
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This dedication leads to paintings that feel like living, breathing masses of constant evolution and change. Piñeiro Bello's visual universe seems to draw equally from science and spirituality, trying to interpret the endless flow of particles, forces and energies that make up the essence of all beings. Within moving brushstrokes and moving layers of paint, forms and symbols appear, disappear and reappear, teasing multiple associations. Her colorful waves shift into stripes and waves, while the intentionally bare spots reveal the green canvas underneath. These moments of openness allow the paintings to breathe, evoking air and wind moving between the elements.
The result is automatic scheduling of gestures, markings, and wipe times. This density of living and imagined events translates to the canvas as a coherent music of power, memory, and connection.
As we speak, the artist points to an interesting epigram on the wall—a short poem that encapsulates the exact feelings and memories he aims to evoke in a particular work. These pieces may arise from a direct observation of nature, an image, a memory, a line from his reading or even music playing in the background. Piñeiro Bello separates and reassembles these impressions on the wall, using them as a guide for his painting process.
For example, one epigram reads “Tropicalia Extendida”—”Extended Hot Zones.” “Here I was thinking about Tropicalia and Mark Rothko abstracts,” he explains. “So you see, space is divided into two levels on the horizon. After that, I wanted to connect it to a little Baroque expression. “
Nearby, a nearly finished large-format canvas dominates the wall, summarizing and amplifying these feelings and references. With vibrant colors, dynamic forms and layered textures, the piece exudes a dual energy—explosive yet reflective, thoughtful yet captivating. “All my works come from ideas, and I write them on the walls,” explains Piñeiro Bello. For him, painting is like visual poetry, where the senses are translated into colors and gestures. “What surrounds me can give me a picture,” he adds.
While the luscious waves of color and shimmering waves of Piñeiro Bello's paintings bring out the island's living energy, the shadowy areas of dark tones and deep blues quietly evoke its historical wounds and personal struggles. These shadows are steeped in what happened to the artist, reflecting the contradictions that fuel his work—a celebration of Cuban beauty combined with an irreconcilable longing for a country he can never return to. “I came with 200 dollars in my pocket; I didn't think I could stay,” he recounts about his first arrival in New York at the age of twenty.
An important meeting with the artist JR in Havana was instrumental in Piñeiro Bello's journey. After their meeting, JR invited her to join him in the living room. What began as a three-month stay in New York with a few artist friends expanded into something permanent, thanks to a grant from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation. “There was a Cuban manager there who asked us if we would be able to do a show in two months,” explained Piñeiro Bello. “We just said yes. We had nothing to lose. So we brought some paintings from Cuba and we did a few more in New York.” Those first efforts marked the beginning of his connection to the New York art scene, a back-and-forth journey that continued for three years until he moved to Los Angeles in 2017.
The epidemic brought an unexpected opportunity for Piñeiro Bello to return to Cuba, reconnect with his mother, friends and the natural environment that has long nourished his work. Now based in Miami, he still makes trips back to Cuba, navigating the conflicting emotions this visit stirs up. Although he knows he will never live there again, Piñeiro Bello feels purposeful in his current position—giving support to those who are still there while keeping the spirit and beauty of his homeland alive. Despite the painful distance, he realized that he can help a lot where he is now, supporting those who are still in Cuba and doing everything possible to ensure that the world does not forget the Cuban movement.
“After all, what artists do is organize the visual chaos into something beautiful,” says Piñeiro Bello, a mantra that seems to echo through his work. His paintings seek natural order in the midst of chaos, clinging to the hope that a new cycle of regeneration may heal and restore.
