Josignacio
Josignacio is a Cuban-born American Contemporary artist and author. He is among the most significant living contemporary Cuban and Latin American artists due to his career auction records, paint medium innovations, and association with notable cultural events, venues, and celebrity figures in the United States and Cuba.
He emerged in Cuba's controversial, "La Generacion de los 80s," the 80s generation of contemporary Cuban art, also referred to as New Cuban Art. This cultural decade in Cuba contrasted a country in transition, influenced artistic debates both at home and abroad, and began the generation's collaboration with “Volume 1" - a commitment to non-government mandated artistic expression. They included Rubén Torres Llorca, José Bedia Valdés, Ricardo Rodriguez Brey, Juan Francisco Elso, Rogelio López Marín, Gustavo Pérez Monzón, José Manuel Fors, Leandro Soto Ortiz, Israel León, Tomás Sánchez and Carlos Alfonzo.
In the second half of the decade, other artistic groups were formed, including 4 x 4, Grupo Hexágono, Arte Calle, Grupo Provisional, the duet René Francisco Rodríguez and Eduardo Ponjuán González and ABTV. Grupo Puré, another new wave of young artists, graduates of the Instituto Superior de Arte, included Ana Albertina Delgado Álvarez, Adriano Buergo, Ciro Quintana. Josignacio first gained artistic recognition in Cuba as a key figure of this period and was widely exhibited in Havana galleries during the 1980s.
In 1984, Josignacio created the "Plastic Paint Medium" of art by mixing epoxy resins with oil colors and other pigments, resulting in a hard, glossed, 3D finish, a method which would become his identifiable style. Josignacio is the first living contemporary Latin American artist to have an artwork surpass US$3 million at auction.
His work has been exhibited in Cuba, Europe, the United States and featured in the collections of several notable cultural institutions including the Tampa Museum of Art, the Wilzig Museum, and Cuba's National Library.
Early life
Upbringing
Josė Ignacio Sánchez Rius was born on 24 October 1963 in Havana, Cuba. He was raised in Havana during the post-Revolution period. During his upbringing, Josignacio was acquainted with several prominent Cuban national figures in the creative arts. These included the artists René Portocarrero, Amelia Peláez, Felipe López, Mariano Rodriguez, Roberto Fabelo, and Gilberto Marino, many of whom had established international profiles and several of which, most notably Portocarrero, would also mentor him with painting lessons. He also knew famed Cuban ballerina and choreographer Alicia Alonso due to his cousins being professional dancers. This exposure was highly formative to his creative development and influenced his own art career.Early art career
He began to exhibit his work in 1979 at the age of sixteen. In 1983, Josignacio passed the admissions test for the Instituto Superior de Arte at the age of twenty. Before attending, however, he has shaved his head as a change in his personal style and appearance to reflect entering a new stage in his life. This act was misinterpreted by the ISA administration as a protest against the Castro government, and he was subsequently banned from attending the institute. Following this incident, the artist was largely self-taught and supplementally educated through continued mentorships, as in his childhood.Despite the reprimand, Josignacio chose to continue to pursue an art career. The following year, in 1984, he worked as a studio assistant for Martinez Anay and Andres Ugalde during their creation of a large scale public mural for the Sociedad de Educación Patriótico-Militar, the Cuban equivalent of the Boy Scouts. The agency was then directed by former Cuban Cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez. His involvement in this public art project proved to be a significant turning-point for his career as it was during that period that the artist first discovered a method of mixing epoxy resin with oil paint. This new medium took him two years to develop and refine through experimentation and would come to be known as the “Plastic Paint Medium.” Josignacio held first career solo exhibition, secured by his uncle Gerardo, at the Artistic and Literary Lyceum of the city of Regla on March 2, 1987. The exhibition was also notable for being the first global exhibition entirely composed of publicly displayed works in the Plastic Paint Medium. During this period of developing the Plastic Paint Medium, Josignacio was a frequent patron of the renowned Havana restaurant La Bodeguita del Medio and part of the community of artists that would gather there.
By 1988, Josignacio was a member of the Asociación Hermanos Saíz, a Cuban youth arts institution, and his career began to become increasingly impacted by international Cuban politics. As an AHS member, he was commissioned that year to create the design for one of the participating floats in the Havana Carnival. Upon completion of his design and presenting it to the event commission, he was informed that his commission was canceled and the float design was recommissioned to fellow Cuban painter Manuel Mendive. This was precipitated by a controversial incident in which one of Mendive's paintings, El Pavo Real, was burned by an anti-Castro activist following his purchase of the piece at an April 22 auction held in the former Cuban Museum of Art and Culture in Miami. In reaction to this incident, the Castro government reassigned Josignacio's commission to Mendive in a show of solidarity.
Nevertheless, by 1989 Josignacio had become professionally established with his work exhibited in eighteen Havana galleries between 1987 and 1989. A final career turning point occurred later that year as he was invited exhibit his art internationally in two venues in Mexico City: The Gallery of the National Auditorium and Centro Cultural Los Talleres in Coyoacán. The planned shows were ultimately cancelled on May 10, 1989, by the Castro government by way of the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. This latest incident prompted the artist relocate permanently to the United States on September 14, 1989, where he would become a naturalized American citizen.
Career in the United States
Upon relocating to the United States in 1989, Josignacio joined the South Florida Cuban diaspora in exile. There he quickly emerged as a major figure in Miami and Cuban exile culture and society. After becoming connected to Cuban fine art dealer Alfredo Martinez, Josignacio was introduced to his network and Martinez became a patron and supporter of his work. Martinez owned two prominent art galleries in Coral Gables: Marpad Gallery and Alfredo Martinez Gallery. Josignacio became a featured artist of both and would quickly establish himself in the American art market through the 1990s.In 1991 Josignacio had a solo exhibition in Marpad Gallery and was then a featured artist in the annual Art Miami contemporary art fair, in which he would maintain a regular presence through 2007. The following year was a featured artist in Marpad Gallery's major collective exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of the Discovery of America, held in April 1992. The exhibition featured 37 Latin American artists from Cuba, Costa Rica, Haiti, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Panama, as well as from Spain.
Josignacio experienced a pronounced career breakthrough in the United States by the mid-1990s. In 1996 he had a solo exhibition in Alfredo Martinez Gallery and participated in two prominent South Florida annual collective art exhibitions: Art Palm Beach and the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale's 38th Annual Hortt Competition Exhibition, Florida's oldest juried art exhibition. In the latter Josignacio won the Best in Show award for which he was one of 80 featured artists exhibiting a total of 105 works chosen from a pool of over 1,300 submissions. His winning piece was the work The 3 O'Clock. In 1997 he exhibited in the Liquid night club, a high-profile Miami nightclub of the 1990s, in an exhibition organized by close Madonna associates Ingrid Casares and Chris Paciello. Casares and Paciello would also organize and host three additional exhibitions for Josignacio that year at Risk, another of their night clubs.
In 2001 and 2002 he participated in the Cuba Nostalgia art fair and collective exhibition through Alfredo Martinez Gallery. The exhibitions featured other leading Cuban artists such as the Cuban Vangaurdia artists, Jose Maria Mijares, and Carlos Alfonzo.
From 2006 to 2010, Josignacio was the subject of three film documentaries. In 2013 he published his first novel, Las Lagrimas del Cocodrilo.
The mid-2010s was another pivotal period in Josignacio's career. In 2015 he returned to Cuba for the first time in 25 years since emigrating to the United States. That same year he set the global auction record for the highest price achieved by a living Cuban artist with the sale of The Three Wisest Monkeys for US$720,000 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In March 2016 Josignacio set the global auction record for the highest price achieved by a living Latin American artist with the sale of The Music is Timeless for US$3,481,205.00 in London. This was also the first work by a living Latin American artist to surpass US$3 million at auction. Josignacio's Rostro, sold for US$2,329,200.00 in London. This marked his second instance of reaching the multimillion-dollar threshold at auction and cemented the market value of his artwork in the 21st century. That year Josignacio returned once again to Cuba to display works from his Dancers series, at the request of his childhood friend, Cuban ballerina and choreographer Alicia Alonso. This was first time the series had been exhibited in Cuba. Among the works was a figurative painting of Alonso, which was exhibited at the International Ballet Festival in The National Ballet of Cuba in Havana.
In 2017 the artist developed three major new series of work: one of the Chinese Zodiac, one of Cuban national hero José Martí, and one of LGBT+ themed works in opposition to homophobia and transphobia. Each was unveiled and displayed in exhibitions centered on their respective themes.
In 2021 he was a featured artist participating in Art Basel Miami; this was the international art fair's first showing since the outbreak of the global coronavirus pandemic.
In 2024, Josignacio marked the 40th anniversary of his development of the Plastic Paint Medium by breaking a three-year exhibiting hiatus and participating in the high-profile Flora & Fauna exhibition, held in the former Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo. The exhibition was his first show in Tampa Bay and his first exhibition since 2021. Funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Flora & Fauna also featured other notable artists including Adriano Nicot and Edel Alvarez Galban, and received coverage from Diario Las Americas, The Artisan Magazine, as well as television coverage. Three of Josignacio's well established nature themed series were on view: his Butterfly, Flowers, and Fish.
File:ThePact2015byJosignacio.jpg|thumb|The Pact, 2015 by Josignacio, capturing the Cuban Thaw. Part of the permanent public collection of the Tampa Museum of Art.
In December 2024, Josignacio participated in the Art Basel-affiliated exhibition Forbidden Fruit in Miami Beach during Miami Art Week 2024. The exhibition was notable for being the largest exhibition of Cuban erotic art ever held and drawing more than one thousand attendees to its opening. His featured work in the exhibit, Honey, your dinner is served, was then donated to the World Erotic Art Museum, marking his first career entry into a museum permanent collection and capping the 40th anniversary of his first Plastic Paint Medium work. Honey, your dinner is served was worth a reported $256,000 and was considered the flagship donation of the collection of donated works that marked the largest donation the museum had received outside the Wilzig family.
Following the WEAM donation, in January 2025 it was announced that Josignacio was added into the permanent collection of the Tampa Museum of Art with the acquisition of his piece The Pact. Executed ten years prior in 2015, The Pact was donated by art patron Antonio Permuy and was considered a notable work in Josignacio's career for marking the historic "Cuban Thaw" in diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. The acquisition was also noteworthy due to the long established Cuban roots in Tampa, and the many visits of Cuban national figure José Martí, who is prominently featured in the center of the piece, to the city. The Tampa Museum of Art released a statement marking the acquisition saying "The Pact is a significant work that commemorates the thawing of relations between the United States and Cuba, in addition to highlighting José Martí's historical connection with our community."