Yuniel Delgado Castillo
[ BIO - STATEMENT - ARTISTIC CV ]
BIO.
Yuniel Delgado Castillo (Havana, 1984)
A Cuban visual artist currently residing in Madrid, he is considered the enfant terrible of new Cuban painting. Graduating with honors from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts (2011), specializing in painting, he established a prestigious reputation in the Cuban art scene, both on and off the island. His main virtues are the honesty and passion with which he approaches painting and the very act of painting. Those who know him can attest to a volcanic and incredibly prolific subjectivity that constantly works and produces great works. His restless nature and affective predisposition towards the medium have made him a tremendously versatile and muscular artist. Hence his constant explorations in the field of different techniques, media, and languages such as printmaking, sculpture, installation, and drawing, with the grammar of painting being where he displays all his power. From the beginning of his career until today, he has demonstrated his vocation for large formats, which has impacted the prefiguration of important mural, installation projects, including environmental sculpture and even some performance art gestures that certify his commitment and the levels of complicity with the aesthetic act itself, even beyond any social approval. He has always shown extreme freedom during (and in front of) the creative process, which leads him to great emancipation and places him in a zone of ethical and emotional comfort with himself. Spontaneity is, without a doubt, one of his strengths, while also becoming an axiomatic key to understanding his methodology and working method. Most of the time—or almost always—he dispenses with sketches or preconceived ideas that might hinder the clean (uncontaminated) relationship established between the act of making and the blank canvas. Like other artists, he is guided by the obsession to find his own style, broadening the classifying and reductionist limits of art in general, to offer a genuine, sensitive, and truthful production. Something he has undoubtedly achieved with great effort and enviable tenacity. While still a student at the renowned Academy, he held his first solo exhibition at the Centro Pro-Danza in 2006, attracting critical attention for the irreverent appearance of his work. In 2013, he traveled to the United States as part of a group exhibition at the Aicon Gallery in New York. Coinciding with this exhibition, he held other presentations until he moved to Boston to open a studio as an artist. Despite the success and projects, the harsh climate forced him to settle in South Florida, where he opened his own studio-gallery in December 2014. He was fortunate, around that time, to have been nominated for the scholarship and commission program of the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) in Miami. He has also been awarded residency programs and participated in group exhibitions in Naples, Italy, in 2016, at the Pam Museum, and in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2019. In addition, he has given lectures on his art at the Roberson Art Gallery of Pennsylvania State University. He participated on several occasions in auctions and art fairs such as those in Florence and Denmark. His work is in public and private collections, especially in Germany, the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain, Russia, Portugal, Luxembourg, Costa Rica, and other countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
Statement.
I do not conceive of art except as a space of emancipation and freedom, a place where I can find catharsis, where I can feel that I live fully and where I can construct myself as a subject at every moment. My work responds to that need and that principle. I work every day guided by an internal and intense desire to communicate. That is, as an artist, my main objective. It is what I believe will truly give meaning to my legacy. It might seem an exaggeration or an outdated gesture, but there is no moment when I am not creating, thinking, or fantasizing. It is a kind of supreme feeling, a necessity and demand for my soul. Painting and drawing have been, in this sense, my two great allies. Especially painting, with which I establish a very deep dialogue that, at some point along the way, transcends me. Sketches and notes have always seemed like prosthetic structures, convalescent frames. I prefer spontaneity, letting myself be carried away by the energy dictated by my soul and arranged by the universe. In this way, I aspire to create a genuine and different work, with high doses of personal sensibility in which the collective subject finds its own identifications. It can be said that it is a kind of trance between the blank mind and the intensity of the soul, resulting in a singular work, with a notable influence of figurative expressionism, bathed in contemporaneity and served by the reality that surrounds me. I try to explore within the context of my own limits and question, if anything, the tyranny of classifications, so I ignore labels regarding painting. I just do one thing: paint. My production is the result of a processual work of arduous laboriousness that has also led me to moments of extreme physical exhaustion when faced with the dimensions of the formats in which I usually develop my pieces. The strength and dynamism required to create large canvases or charcoal drawings are fundamental to achieving an aesthetic finish and technical quality that denotes the existence of a strong and organic work in its relationship of content and form. I consider myself an anthropologist and an artist at the same time. On the canvas, in each work, on each unshaped stone, I place many unknowns that vary in sema, meaning, and answer, as my inner self dictates to me. Even without stopping to think about what I want to write or highlight in my works, words or phrases from never-read languages, mathematical equations perhaps incoherent to the eye of an expert on the subject; as well as strange, perhaps surreal symbols, which sometimes find a resemblance to ancient symbolisms, are imprinted on them. That is why I always affirm that my work is in constant evolution and growth: in an endless search for answers and light. My work goes beyond the politics of the art market, because I strive every day to continue being a creative subject, honest with my discourse and an eternal lover of art.
Artist CV.
CONTEMPORARY ART FAIRS AND GROUP EXHIBITIONS.
2025. ESTAMPA Contemporary Art Fair. October 09-12, 2025. IFEMA Madrid, DDR ART GALLERY.
2022 . Lost Paradise. Exhibition of Cuban artists. La casa del reloj / Matadero. Madrid, Spain. . Various Talents. Select group show. Museum of Algeciras, Nando Arguelles Art Projects. Cadiz, Spain. 2019 . The Cuban Collection. 508 Gallery. Chelsea, England. 2017 . Cheers. Provincial Center of Plastic Arts. Havana, Cuba. 2016 . The Change. Pan Museum. Naples, Italy. . Selection of Drawings. Jade Museum. Costa Rica. 2015 . Erasing Borders. Hub Robenson Galleries. Pennsylvania State University. USA . The Wall. Del Castillo Art Studio. Hialeah, FL, USA. . Uniting Colors. Doral City Hall. Florida. USA. . The Hispanic Hand. Milander Art Gallery. Hialeah, FL, USA. 2014 . Pop up. Art Festival. Miami Lakes. FL, USA. . Art Auction to support the fight against AIDS. Ralopsia Gallery. Boston, USA. 2013 . The Wall. Aicon Gallery. New York, USA. . The wall. Molina Art Gallery. Miami FL. USA. . Cuban Art Festival. Children's Museum. New York, USA. . Convergences. Visual dialogue of five Cuban painters. Del Castillo Art Studio. Hialeah FL, USA . The sleep of reason produces monsters. Karura Art Center Museum. Vigo, Spain. . Cuban Art, World Art Exhibition. Galeria Walferdange, Luxembourg. . Future. Collateral to the XII Havana Biennial. Havana, Cuba. 2012 . Erotic Art. Wilfredo Lam Center. Havana, Cuba. . Traveling exhibition around the art galleries of the Vedado neighborhood. Havana, Cuba. . He who has wings. Jardines de la Tropical. Havana, Cuba. . Social Imaginaries. Collateral to the XI Havana Biennial. Havana, Cuba. 2011 . Faces of the City. Havana Model. Havana, Cuba.ç 2009 . Among Friends. Mariano Rodriguez Art Gallery. Havana, Cuba. 2008 . Exhibition to celebrate the anniversary of the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts. Havana, Cuba. 2007 . Inconsistencies. Romerillo Cultural Center, Havana, Cuba. . Exhibition of local artists. Jaimanitas Cultural Center. Havana, Cuba. Artistic Residencies 2016. Naples, Italy for the group exhibition The Change, Pam Museum. 2019. Copenhagen, Denmark for the exhibition The Arrival of the Common Man, Sapere Aude Gallery Fairs and Biennials 2020. Art Heming, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2019. XII Biennial of Art and Design, Florence, Italy. 2022. Kunst for alle, lokomotivvaerkstedet, Copenhagen, Denmark Others 2015. Conference on Cuban art, Pennsylvania State University. USA.
INDIVIDUAL EXHIBITIONS
2023 Carnation Nando Arguelles Art Project, exhibition hall of the Royal Prison of Tarifa 2022 . Trance. Contrast Gallery. Barcelona, Spain. . Balance der Koexistenz (Balance of coexistence), Heinssingart Gallery. Lubeck, Germany. Lost connections. Sapere Aude Gallery. Copenhagen, Denmark 2021 . Rebirth. CAV La Neomudejar Museum. Madrid, Spain. . Katheiro. Herrero de Tejada Gallery. Madrid, Spain. 2020 . The arrival of the common man. Sapere Aude Gallery. Copenhagen, Denmark. 2019 . Giudizio Universale. Tibaldi Arte Contemporaneo Gallery. Rome, Italy. . Selection of works. HAV Coffee and Art. Havana, Cuba. . Maiorum. Provincial Center of Plastic Arts. Havana, Cuba. . Effugium. Del Castillo Art Studio. Collateral to the XIII Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba. 2018 . Hominium. DNasco Gallery. Havana, Cuba. 2015 . Evolution. Miami Art Connection, Miami, Florida, USA. 2011 . Los Caprichos. San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts. Havana, Cuba. 2006 . Selection of Drawings for Cuban Dance Event. Centro pro Danza, Havana, Cuba.
Collections.
Studiolo Collection, Spain . RGH Collection, Spain (private) . Correa & Borges Art Collection, Florida, USA . UCF Downtown Campus Collection, Orlando, FL, USA . Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, Mesa, Arizona, USA (public collection) Private collections USA, CANADA, MEXICO, SPAIN, GERMANY, FRANCE, ITALY, ENGLAND, SWITZERLAND, CHINA, VIETNAM.
The works of Yuniel Delgado Castillo can be seen at:
DDR ART GALLERY, Calle de la Encomienda 21, 28012, Madrid.
Tel. +34 659819791
