A landscape where beauty and desolation coexist in a deeply human narrative

Rubert G Quintana

Mogotes is a series of pictorial works that largely synthesizes my  hotographic work ("In Situ", 2001) on the decline in quality of life in Cuba, documented through images of deteriorating urban architecture and absurd ideological propaganda via advertising graphics. Triumphalist messages amid disaster — chronicles of Cuba's early apocalypse.

These pieces are a collage of memories, a documentation of chaos, and a cluster of structured emotions that survive—somehow beautifully—within my displaced memory. These solitary constructions are a mimesis of Cuban reality: an apocalyptic urban landscape, touched by surrealism, isolated and consumed, narrating the erosion of human dignity.

Although the absence of life is the most evident trait in my canvases, it is the cultural remnants that "speak" of their former inhabitants. The viewer ends up speculating about the cracks, understanding the textures, and reconstructing the fragmented shapes of the surroundings. The architectural structures I depict—solitary and worn—are not only material ruins but deep allegories of emotional, cultural, and political abandonment that has marked Cuban society for decades under an implacable dictatorship.

Mogotesis an introspective reflection on uprootedness, solitude, and isolation. Through a technique as classic as landscape painting, I invite the viewer to contemplate universal themes such as identity, historical memory, displacement, resistance, and human dignity. 

My paintings, poetic in style and at times monochromatic, emphasize the inherent drama and nostalgia of this visual narrative. I seek for each work to act as a mirror in which the viewer may recognize themselves, understanding that this discourse of desolation, forced migration, and loneliness is, unfortunately, increasingly common and ever more contemporary. 

Rubert G Quintana

Retratos de la Ausencia

Isabella Arzuaga

The mogotes—imposing rocky formations typical of the Caribbean geography and especially abundant in the Viñales Valley—traditionally represent beauty, stability, and national pride. Of apparent Taíno origin, the term "mogote" refers to these solitary hills, worn down by centuries of natural erosion, that rise abruptly in fertile areas. Historically, they have been depicted by countless artists and chroniclers and have served as sites for religious rituals and as refuges for lovers, fugitives, runaway slaves, and rebels—becoming icons of Cuban culture and landscape.

In his recent work titled Mogotes, Rubert Quintana offers, through urban landscape, a critical reflection on Cuba's harsh social reality, establishing metaphorical parallels with deteriorated, dysfunctional, and isolated urban structures. The artist offers a sharp interpretation of these structures as blueprints or records of a latent past, visually revealing the emotional and moral deterioration resulting from decades of scarcity and mistreatment. 

His paintings, mainly executed in acrylic on canvas, adopt a hybrid aesthetic—between the visual poetics of nostalgia and the alarming precariousness of Cuban life—creating a morbid link between beauty and desolation.

These solitary constructions portrayed by Quintana enter the Kafkaesque universe of architectural metamorphosis: solitary ruins, a collage of memories, a deep allegory of the emotional and cultural abandonment endured by several generations of Cubans. The choice of predominantly monochromatic tones emphasizes the drama, nostalgia, and decay. Each work acquires an introspective dimension where the viewer delights in the design, the sobriety of the landscape, and might even feel they remember a place like this. As the artist himself said:

"There is a bit of ruin in each of us," and at times we are silent accomplices to collective degradation, unaware of the fragility of our historical and cultural memory.

Rubert's discourse is contemporary and engaging, characterized by a hybridization of languages and an anthropological commitment. Mogotes not only denounces and makes visible the material and moral decay of his country of origin, but also becomes an urgent global reflection on identity, displacement, and the right to a dignified life.

A Cuban landscape stripped of its lush nature, of palm trees and smiling mulattas. An apocalyptic scene. A surrealist constructivism. A tower, a lighthouse, the damned circumstance of water everywhere. The utopia of a displaced soul. The blueprint of a mad architect. A perfect place. My cousins' house. The strict basin of all memories. Life. Half-closed eyes. The natural formation of abandonment. The corroded mountain. La Cabaña. The end of all dreams. The final outpost. The apology of oblivion. The backyard. My treehouse... Call it what you will—Rubert calls them Mogotes.