“It is the highest function of art to tell us who we are.”  John Russell.

Vargas Gallery, in collaboration with the Art Department at Vargas University, is proud to present Nuevos Caprichos, a solo exhibition by Yuniel Delgado. Curated by Henry Ballate, M.F.A., this exhibition provides a fascinating look at the mysterious darkness and exotic light of the artist’s world.

A Born, 2017, Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 90 x 92.”

Yuniel Delgado Castillo has consecrated himself to a task, expressionist in style with prominent strokes and dark colors; he also uses irony, humor, suggestion, intelligent metaphor and constituting patterns which define this artist’s modus operandi. More than a mere creative exercise or redundancy on humanity´s social and moral weathering, Yuniel Delgado reflects and projects on the behavior and development of the contemporary subject, always with a prier´s tinge, generally opting for big scale pieces.

A mi ser con mi alma, 2016, Charcoal on canvas , 60 x80.”

The grandiloquence of his canvases, the diversity of materials and textures, and the discursive skill of subject matters have been fervid patterns of an artistic work rooted in consonance with present times. His attraction into the darkness of the human condition reveals affinities and parallelism with the work of Cuban artist Antonia Eiriz and the Spanish master Jose Francisco Goya. Any new artwork is directly influenced by its predecessors, and it was new art, more than anything else, that kept the Old Masters alive and relevant.

Left, 2017, Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, 70 x 90.”

Art historian and critic Kelly Martínez who knows and has worked closely with the artist tells us, “From Goya to Yuniel Delgado Castillo have been almost two centuries. However, a thread remains; otherness, inversion of order, tearing, a pendulum that oscillates between eroticism and death. The dark, aggressive line is also maintained, putting pressure on the canvas; turning it into a monstrous space but capable of its own beauty. That is precisely what this young Cuban painter takes from the Spanish master and reinvents himself from more contemporary codes.”

 The Toothless, 2016, Charcoal on Canvas, 60 x 80.” 

Yuniel Delgado Castillo is a Cuban visual artist born in Havana on December 28, 1984. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of San Alejandro in 2011. As a student of the academy, he attended his first personal exhibition in the Pro-danza Center in Cuba, in 2006. He traveled to the United States in 2013, to attend a collective exhibition in the Aicon Gallery in New York City. He also attended other presentations in that city and eventually moved to Boston. He relocated to South Florida and opened his own studio in Miami in December 2014.