Nicolás Guillén Landrián
(b. Camagüey, 1938 - d. Miami, 2003)
Nicolás Guillén Landrián was a documentary filmmaker and a painter. He was the nephew of Nicolás Guillén, considered the Cuban National Poet. Guillén Landrián devoted part of his early artistic career to film, leaving a legacy of eighteen documentaries, including his masterworks Ociel del Toa (1965) and Coffee Arábiga (1968). Some of his documentaries were considered to be critical of the prevailing political positions of the Cuban Revolution. For this he was briefly incarcerated, subjected to government mandated psychiatric treatment that included electroshock therapy, and excluded from the island’s film industry. While still in Cuba, he began painting expressionistic portraits of people he would see in the streets of Havana. Guillén Landrián migrated to Florida in 1989 and the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture in Miami presented his first solo exhibition. In 2002 the Miami Dade College presented a solo show of his works at the Tower Theater.
