Cuban painter Julio Matilla dies in France

Hecuban painter Julio Matillapassed away this monday inFrance at 94 years old, as confirmed toCyberCuba sources close to the artist.

This Monday, at 7:00 a.m. diedthe painter in Biarritz, France, reported the curator and collector of Cuban art in Miami, Gustavo Orta, resident in Miami and close to the Matilla family.

The painter was admitted to the French city where he lived and his death was due to natural causes, Orta reported.

Matilla was born in Camagüey in 1928, but he studied at the San Alejandro school in Havana until completing his training with trips to Europe in 1953, when he exhibited at the Salon de Arte Libre in Paris, in addition to making works in 1956 and 1957 two personal exhibitions in salons in the Cuban capital.

His works have been exhibited in renowned galleries and museums in the cities of New York, Miami, Paris, Mexico, El Havre, Biarritz, Bayonne, Caracas, Maracaibo, Bogotá, Medellín and Santo Domingo.

Since he was young, Matilla was also linked to the world of entertainment, cinema, dance and ballet and was the art director of the emblematic Cuban filmMemories of Underdevelopment (1968), by director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Orta also recalled this Monday that Matilla was present at all the group exhibitions that were held in South Florida, in 2006, at City Hall in Hialeah until the one held at the Freedom Tower of Miami Dade College in 2012.

The Cuban writer Severo Sarduy pointed out that Matilla had found in his work a very personal plastic language, where the painting is a fact that can only be reached by emotion.

“Emotion, inspiration, together with the craft of constant creation for many years, are the features that distinguish it. His canvases always have an exquisite technical elaboration. This is the result of a job sustained in the midst of adverse circumstances, incompatible with the condition of an exile," the critic Alberto Lauro also noted about his work in theHispanic Cuban Magazine.

According to Lauro, “with Wifredo Lam, Cárdenas, Sarduy, Gina Pellón, JoaquínFerrer, Jorge Camacho, Ramón Alejandro, Roberto García York, Edouard Manet, José Triana and now Zoé Valdés, he is part of the Cubans whose work has had an impact in France, following in the footsteps of the violinist Brindis de Salas and the writers Condesa de Merlín and Alba de Céspedes.”