Ever Fonseca Cerviño (Guantánamo, 1938) who hails from the rural areas of eastern Cuba, came to Havana to study in the National School of Fine Arts (ENA) in Cubanacán.
Always upbeat, imbued with family connections and the symbolic characters that lived in the Cuban landscape, the source of many legends of the country people, Ever Fonseca began to paint large canvasses overflowing with the tenacious and imaginative stream coming up from the deepest roots of his land.
From the first phase of his work his paintings, done in oil on canvas, reflected the cultural confluences in the Antillean context, with references to legends where the güije or jigüe lives, those nocturnal beings that emerge from the rivers, the popular stories, the practice of religious beliefs or local history. They came up from the depths of the lives of Cuban country people.
In his paintings, done in somber colors, the black lines high- light the human figures, to which zoomorphic elements were attached, tangled in the two-dimensional surface. They described a multi-level evocation of existence, like a great circle making up the stage of life itself. Full of great expressive strength, his figures, with wide-open eyes, float in the space of the picture. They are allusions to the sun, the moon, the world of latent shafts of sunlight intermingled with animals like the chameleon, fish, and butterflies. The animals represent the multiple stories of the emergence and transformations of the various species, expressing the permanent metamorphosis of living things, in continuous interaction with humans.
In his recent work Ever Fonseca has worked in sculpture, integrating his pictorial imagery and sculpture into installations with plant fibers and plants, creating a space where his artistic narrative is connected in a tangible expression of his vision of Cuban culture.
Guillermina Ramos Cruz, 2012
