In Aleta de pez (1992), Manuel Mendive gives the human figure no privileged position among the other inhabitants of the canvas. Faces emerge from the same dark substance as animal bodies, elongated limbs, and forms whose anatomy resists classification. Each presence acquires its identity through contact with those around it. A contour that distinguishes one creature also helps describe its neighbor; an extremity leads the eye toward another body before its ownership becomes certain. This interdependence gives the painting its underlying order. Within Mendive’s Afro-Cuban spiritual imagination, the boundaries separating kinds of beings remain permeable, and the human body participates in a life that extends beyond its own recognizable shape.

The subdued palette makes this continuity physically convincing. Greens, grays, browns, and deep blacks establish a common substance through which pale edges and scattered passages of ochre travel. At the upper left, small faces look out from a concentration of overlapping forms; at the right, a tall, dark presence extends a narrow arm downward. Their differing scales produce an intimacy unconstrained by naturalistic proportion. Mendive allows certain features to become precise while leaving the bodies to which they belong partly concealed. The viewer encounters eyes, fingers, and curved appendages before comprehending the creatures themselves. Recognition proceeds through fragments, requiring sustained attention to beings whose existence exceeds what their visible outlines disclose.

The title directs that attention toward a small organ with an essential function: a fin gives a body balance and direction within the element that sustains it. This relationship between an individual life and its surrounding medium offers a way into the painting as a whole. Its figures inhabit a shared density, their gestures and contours continually drawing them into one another’s company. Even the darkest passages remain occupied, holding presences that become perceptible only gradually. The work asks for a corresponding patience from the spectator. To look closely is to acknowledge the extent of this inhabited world, including those lives that remain difficult to name, separate, or fully see.