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Sicre Family Story

    Jorge Luis Sicre refers to his art as “Neosymbolist” in reference to the more
spiritual nature of the “Symbolist art of the late 19th Century fountain-head of
Modernism is orientated towards Jung rather than Freud.”
    One exponent of both Impressionism and Symbolism was the great sculptor
Auguste Rodin. His portage, Antoine Bourdel, was with DeCreft, the teacher of
Juan Jose Sicre. So, it can be said that his Neosymbolist grandson has a direct,
even genetic line with Symbolism. Thus, three centuries are spanned by this
continuum. Neosymbolism is J.L. Sicre’s term for what might more commonly
be called “Magical Realism”, a term coined by fellow Cuban, Alejo Carpentier.
Juan Jose Sicre has been credited with having introduced Modernism into
Cuban art. As a professor at the San Alejandro Academy in Havana, Sicre had
many protégés who were deemed to be great artist os Cuban modernism in the
20th Century. Additionally, he founded or co-founded a major art academy in
Caracas, Venezuela. This feat was accomplished at the height of the nation’s
poet President, Romulo Gallegos.
    However, Sicre is best known for one of the largest monuments in Latin
America. The monument in honor of the poet/rebel, Jose Marti, which resides in
the Plaza de la Revolution (previously called the Plaza de la Republica). He won
the competition to sculpt it, but ultimately had to sue the government when
Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator, tried to take it away from him. Sicre was
victorious and as a result was awarded a $100,000 judgment. As originally
conceived be my Grandfather, the statue would have been ensconced in a
colonnaded Greco-Roman temple-like structure. However, today it sits in the
open. It stands as a symbol of Cuban nationalism as the Statue of liberty stands
for American nationalism.
    Other Sicre public monuments include: The Haitian patriot, General Petion; a
multi-figured grouping reminiscent of Rodin’s Les Bourgeois de Calle (both
pieces reside in Haiti); a Jose Marti bust resides in the Maison de Cuba at the
Sorbonne in Paris and a bust of President Kennedy at OAS Headquaters in
Washington DC. The latter was commissioned, when after a brief stint in Spain,
he moved to Washington DC, never to see either Bambu, his studio in the pos
“Recidencial Cap De Villa”, near Havana nor his beach house in Tarara. When
Trujillo, the late dictator of the Dominican Republic, sent an emissary with a
cost-is-no-object commission for an equestrian monument, my Grandfather
snorted, “Only if Trujillo is the horse.”
    Juan Jose Sicre ended his days in Cleveland, Ohio. His son, Jorge Juan Sicre,
a Cellist in the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, looked after him. While in Ohio
he carved abstract figurative pieces from the driftwood and river glass which
he found on the shores of Lake Erie. These late works were a major departure
from the academic or Art Moderne bronzes he was known for. The latter
includes a bust of his Grandson, J.L. Sicre at 9 years old, a bust of his wife,
Sylvia, and a bust of his friend and colleague Antonio Gattorno (JL Sicre’s
maternal cousin).
    In a show in Miami involving J.L. Sicre, Juan Jose Sicre and Antonio Gattorno,
the gallery owner, Frank Padron, chided J.L. Sicre for not painting “Like a
Cuban.” Sicre responded with a series of oil based on the mythic themes of
Cuba. This was history repeating itself, as the same accusation had been leveled
at Gattorno in his day. Ironically, his “Gaujiros” are as emblematic of Cuba as
Gaugin’s “Pont-Aven” pieces were of Brittany or his later works of Polynesia.
One of these was a large mural of rural Cuba for the Bacardi headquarters in
New York. It now resides on the top floor of their Miami headquarters.
Gattorno used a goat as a model for one of his paintings. When it got lose, the
papers ran the story. He lamented that the media was more interested in the
runaway goat the mural! All three generations of talented curmudgeons
notably reeled at what passes for fine art in those and these days. As T.S. Elliot
put it, “That art is the greatest which remains faithful to tradition.”
    For a long time, Gattorno painted Surrealist pieces similar to and
contemporaneous with the best work of Dali and Berman. But, perhaps his best
efforts were the haunting meditative oils of his late period when he lived in the
old whaling village of Acushnet, Massachusetts. After his dear friend, drinking
and fishing buddy died, he put down his brushes for ten years. That friend
wrote a monograph on this leader of Cuba’s first avant-garde group (Los
Once). His name was Ernest Hemmingway. An apotheosis of sorts occurred
when the Art Museum of the University of Miami mounted a breath taking
retrospective of his oeuvre.
Contemporary