Painted in Paris in 1929, Gitana Tropical belongs to the Víctor Manuel`s early years, when his painting is offering services of vibration and foundation. Here are the essential features of his plastic imagination: Gaugin as starting point of his poetic perception; a discreet Cezannian presence; the primitive Italian, Modigliani and Arie Laurencin.

But its definitive American character is evinced by the author himself: “She is mongrel, a mulatto girl, but I added almond-shaped eyes like the Mexican or Peruvian Indians …''. The so-heterogeneous elements are re-arranged from a unitary intuition transforming this work in a central symbol of Víctor Manuel's poetic.

Gitana Tropical is the image professing more fascination over the audience, close to be a sort of American Gioconda, the first classic work from the Cuban pictorial modernism.


Taken from the Digital Newsletter La Ventana Abierta from the National Fine Arts Museum.