Roberto Fabelo
233.7 x 200.7 cm
This large-scale painting exemplifies Roberto Fabelo's exploration of the grotesque convergence between human and animal natures, a central theme in his 2012 exhibition No somos animales. Drawing from the artist's obsessive pursuit of zoomorphic alterations, the work depicts a hybrid figure that embodies the degradation of human essence into primal instincts, evoking the servility, abjection, and brutality observed in contemporary Cuban society. As articulated in critical reflections on Fabelo's oeuvre, such forms serve as a synthetic and connotative warning, illustrating the loss of values and the exaltation of frenzy where moral and intellectual genes undergo mutation. The composition confronts viewers with a cry of repulsion and alarm, urging a ethical revision of the social body through its hallucinatory expression built between daydream and wakefulness.
Provenance
Roberto Fabelo Studio > Private Collection Portugal > Cernuda ArteExhibitions
"Roberto Fabelo: No Somos Animales (We Are Not Animals)," Galería Habana, Vedado, Havana, Cuba, November 21, 2012–December 21, 2012
"EXPO CHICAGO," Cernuda Arte, Festival Hall, Navy Pier, Chicago, Illinois, United States, April 11, 2024–April 14, 2024
"A Surrealist Century / Un Siglo Surrealista," Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, Florida, United States, September 6, 2024–January 1, 2025
Literature
Roberto Fabelo: Nos Somos Animales , 2012, pp. 8, 24, 25–27 (studio view with the artist illustrated on the front overlap; installation view illustrated, p. 8; illustrated, p. 25; detail illustrated, pp. 26–27)
"Our daily jungle (La selva nuestra de cada día)," Leonardo Padura, essay/review (illustrated), Roberto Fabelo Studio (Reasoned Catalog / Reviews), Havana, Cuba, November 2012
"Roberto Fabelo: No somos animales," exhibition catalogue, Galería Habana (with texts by Leonardo Padura and Caridad Blanco), Havana, Cuba, 2012
Isabel María Pérez Pérez, ed., Roberto Fabelo, Seville, 2016, pp. 70, 71 (illustrated, p. 71)
"Persistencia del animal (Persistence of the animal)," online auction catalogue entry (Lot 60, New Now), Phillips, New York, New York, United States, 2023
"IMPORTANT CUBAN ARTWORKS", Volume Twenty, Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, FL, 2023, page 94.