Abela and his character El Bobo

He was born on January 3, 1889 in San Antonio de los Baños, Havana province and died on November 9, 1965, Havana. Abela worked during his early years as tobacconist. Around the year of 1912, he started his painting studies at San Alejandro and began to collaborate with newspapers from Havana city, making drawings of the epoch.

In 1921, he traveled to Spain, where he made different exhibitions, returning to Havana in 1924; at the following year, he created El Bobo, satirical character of great popularity. In 1927, he entered the group of painters that, through Revista de Avance, broke with the Academic Painting, with them, he participated in the exhibition Exposition of New Art. In the same year, he traveled to Paris and in 1928, made an important solo exhibition. He returned to Cuba and joined himself to the growing struggle against Machado's Dictatorship with his character El Bobo. When this dictatorship went down in 1923, he abandoned journalism and caricature. A journey to Milan in 1934, put him in contact with primitive and renaissaintists Italian painters. Returning back, he created with other painters in 1937 the Ensayo Experimental Libre para Pintores y Escultores (Free Experimental Essay for Painters and Sculptors. His painting Guajiro was awarded at the National Salon of 1938.

Guajiros oil painting/canvas 84 x 71 cm

From 1942 to 1952, Abela assumed diplomatic responsabilities in Mexico and Guatemala and around these years the artistic production was not so ample. In 1950, he broke with his preceding work and started his last pictorial expression, rising it permanently until his death.

In 1952, he returned to Paris to restlessly paint and study and started a close encounter with Kandinsky's, Klee's, Mondrian's and Picasso's works. Eduardo came back to Cuba in 1954. In the following years, he performed diverse exhibitions, among them, a Retrospective in 1964.


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