Cuban artist Alejandro Piñeiro Bello made headlines earlier this year when he became the first contemporary artist to join the prestigious Pace Gallery roster. His work is a vivid fusion of abstraction and empirical figuration, channeling the vibrant energies of the Caribbean’s nature and people.
Situated in the Little Haiti neighborhood, his two-room studio buzzes with creative energy. The space itself is a rich tapestry of art, music, and books—a reflection of the artist’s synesthetic process, which seeks to distill and amplify the elemental forces of Caribbean culture.
Piñeiro Bello’s exuberant, expansive canvases occupy a bewildering liminal space between abstraction and figuration. They emerge from a deeply psychological, emotive, and spiritual engagement with reality, blending objective presences, memories, folklore, imagination, and symbolic elements.
The Craft of Piñeiro Bello
“I’ve always played with a lot of things,” he says about an earlier piece that leans more toward symbolic abstraction. “All of these approaches came together at some point in an organic blend of abstraction, figuration, and symbolism.”
The fluid and ambiguous nature of Piñeiro Bello’s paintings can evoke the vibrant symbolism of Paul Gauguin and the Nabis. Like these artists—who are known for exploring dreamlike, mythical, and spiritual themes—he delves deeply into the emotional and psychological resonance of color.
Piñeiro Bello describes his art-making process as a complete surrender to the energy he perceives, allowing it to flow onto the canvas through purely intuitive and unconscious gestures. “It’s more like a transfer, completely abstract automatism. It’s all about moments of connection and interconnection,” he explains.
This surrender results in paintings that feel like living, breathing masses in continuous evolution and transformation. Piñeiro Bello’s visual universe draws equally from science and spirituality, attempting to translate the perpetual flow of particles, energies, and forces that form the essence of all beings.
The Inspirations Behind the Canvas
While Piñeiro Bello’s paintings radiate the lively energy of the island through their opulent waves of color and lush, sparkling tides, the shadowy areas of darker tones and deeper blues quietly evoke its historical wounds and personal struggles. These shadows stem from the artist’s own experiences and reflect the conflict that animates his work—a celebration of Cuba’s beauty intertwined with an inescapable longing for a homeland he cannot return to.
“I came with 200 dollars in my pocket; I would have never thought I would be able to stay,” he recounts of his initial arrival in New York in his twenties.
A pivotal encounter with artist JR in Havana became instrumental to Piñeiro Bello’s journey. After their meeting, JR invited him to participate in a residency. What began as a three-month stay in New York with a few artist friends extended into something more enduring, thanks to a grant from The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation. “There was a Cuban curator there who asked us if we would be able to do a show in two months,” Piñeiro Bello explains. “We immediately said yes. We didn’t have much to lose.”
The pandemic unexpectedly allowed Piñeiro Bello to return to Cuba, reconnecting with his mother, friends, and the natural landscape that has long nourished his work. Now based in Miami, he still makes trips back to Cuba, navigating the conflicting emotions these visits stir.
A New Life with New Art
While he knows he could never live there again, Piñeiro Bello feels a sense of purpose in his current position—offering support to those still there while keeping alive the spirit and beauty of his homeland. Despite the painful distance, he has realized that he can be much more helpful where he is now, supporting those still in Cuba and ensuring the world never forgets the country’s enduring vibrancy.
“After all, what artists do is to organize the apparent chaos into a beautiful thing,” Piñeiro Bello says, a mantra that seems to echo through his work.
His paintings seek an inherent natural order within chaos, hoping that a new cycle of regeneration might one day heal and restore.
