Lázaro Saavedra
(b. Havana, 1964)
Lázaro Saavedra graduated from the Superior Institute of Art in Havana in 1988, the year of his first solo exhibition Pintar lo que pienso, pensar lo que pinto (Painting what I Think, Thinking what I Paint), at Habana Gallery. He was a member of the Grupo Puré in the 1980s, whose projects incorporated vernacular roots blended with social connotations. He has taught at the Superior Institute of Art since 1991, and founded the collective Enema with a group of his students. An ongoing work of his is Galería I-MEIL, an electronic art activism project. Some of his solo exhibitions include A Retrospective Look (with Rubén Torres Llorca), which won the award for Best Curated Show of the Year in Cuba in 1989; El desafío de mi arte (The Challenge of My Art) in Havana in 1991; Historia para historiadores (History for Historians) in Cienfuegos in 1995; Levántate, Chago; no jodas, Lázaro (Get Up, Chago; Stop Screwing Around, Lázaro) at Espacio Aglutinador, Havana, 1996; Body, Soul and Thought at Gallerie S, Aachen, Germany, in 1996; Mental Massage, at the Rice University Media Center in Houston, Texas, in 1997; and Mi dossier, el descaro y la representación (My Dossier, The Cheek and Representation), at the Center for the Development of Visual Arts in Havana in 1998. In 2002, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana organized the exhibition El único animal que ríe (The Only Animal that Laughs), a compendium of his productive career. Saavedra's work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including La tradición del humor (The Humor Tradition) at the 3rd Havana Biennial in 1989; Cuba OK at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1990; and Trabajando pa’l ingle (Workin' for the Englishman) at the Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom in 1999. In 2014 he received the National Visual Art Award granted by the Cuban Ministry Of Culture for his lifetime achievements.
