José Maria Mijares (Cuban, 1921-2004). Untitled, 1951. Oil paint on canvas; 41⅝ × 59 × 1½ in. Gift of the DeVito Clark family. 2023.763.

height: 41 5/8 in, 105.7275 cm; width: 59 in, 149.86 cm; depth: 1 1/2 in, 3.81 cm

Mayer Center, Latin American Art

Latin American Contemporary Art

One of the most prolific painters of his generation, José Maria Mijares (Cuban, 1921–2004; active in Miami, 1968–2004) shaped a legacy for himself built off strict discipline and a life-long drive to create. Known to have painted for up to six hours daily, the Havana artist made a name for himself alongside Carlos Enríquez, René Portocarrero, and Cundo Bermúdez.

As a student at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, Mijares studied under Leopoldo Romañach and Armando Menocal, who taught the young painter the classical techniques of the past and the modernist exploration of color theory and abstraction, respectively. Mijares would go on to find critical acclaim in his native country less than a decade later, having his first major showing in Havana’s Capitol building in 1944, where he won a second-place prize.

From there, Mijares went on to show in France, Brazil, and even the Venice Biennial in 1956. Around this time, he joined the group of Diez Pintores Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters), active from about 1956 to 1961. During a turbulent period of military coups, rising nationalism, and Castro’s growing influence, the all-male group of artists were in search of a new visual language to define a modern Cuba. Like their Western counterparts, Mijares and his fellow Pintores Concretos were inspired by the major modernist movements of abstraction, surrealism, and cubism.

In this untitled painting from 1951, Mijares employs the simplicity of geometric forms and a limited color palette. Reducing human figures to triangles, circles, and squares, Mijares imparts a sense of energy and movement into the flat, two-dimensional composition. The static neutrals of the brown and beige backdrop heighten the sense of movement in the foreground, using sweeping diagonal lines that imply motion and contrasting colors that seem to vibrate next to one another. While the figures have been condensed to their most basic shapes, they remain familiar enough that viewers can identify circles as heads and elongated triangles and rectangles as torsos, arms, or legs.

After immigrating to Miami in 1968, in protest of Castro’s takeover of Cuba, Mijares’s practice shifted back to figural painting. Needing grounded imagery to remain connected to his native country, to which he would never return, the artist began painting lushly stylized portraits and nostalgic scenes of the Cuban landscapes, maintaining lingering notes of his abstractionist and cubist style. Mijares continued to be celebrated throughout his lifetime, exhibiting at the Lowe Museum and the Bass Museum of Art in Florida, and receiving an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Florida International University in 2001.

—Lisbet Barrientos, Curatorial Assistant

Collection of the artist, 1951-2002; (Mijares Art Gallery), Coral Gables and Wynwood, FL, 2002-2016; acquired, Lori DeVito Clark, Golden, CO, June 2016; donated to the Denver Art Museum, December 2023.