CAMAGÜEY.- It is not the first time that Oscar Lasseria has dedicated a personal exhibition to Our Lady of Charity, Patron Saint of Cuba. That is why he chooses her day, September 8, for the opening. The new exhibition, entitled Blanco & Negro, will be available until the end of the year at the Alejo Carpentier Gallery.

“Ask the Virgin for this country to come forward. May all Cubans, wherever they are on shore, come together and make a single homeland, "he said at the inauguration, before a small group of guests and workers of the institution.

At first glance, the anguish and solutions of an artist emerge in the context of the pandemic; however, they are not merely therapeutic paintings, although painting is a way of relief, as we appreciated back in April 2020, when he published on social networks the quarantine series The time we had to live.

It even goes further back From the Orishas to the Beatles, that personal exhibition of September 2019 when at the Fidelio Ponce gallery he presented the result of his investigation of symbols and characters of Santeria. So, he gave a party of color and meanings to decode from the viewer's perspective.

Now, he returns to the public the task of interpreting a dimension of what is Cuban from the point of view of religiosity. Ultimately, you see what you want and what you know based on your cultural background.

The curator Juan Carlos Mejías prefers to highlight the "enlightenment of the Caribbean soul with all the good that can be contributed from that knowledge to improve the human being." He relates precision, contrast, movements and rhythm to the profession of "tireless demiurge of beauty and of all those things that touch our hearts."

Let's add another highly revealing detail. The visual tour ends in two paintings on metal, made in the '80s in Santa Clara, in workshops of the National Industry Producer of Domestic Utensils (Inpud).

Therefore, Blanco & Negro combines the experience and youth of Oscar Lasseria, due to his ability to rescue and understand the signs of his own work in a decade when he still did not know how to explain them to himself.

Except for those two pieces, and the occasional four, in 2021 he signed most of the set of 42 canvases and 3 sculptures with marine elements. Not even the finished piece of painting at dawn, at opening hours, has a slip.

Until the end of the year, the Alejo Carpentier Gallery will offer the possibility of a tour of the five rooms occupied by the exhibition. Access from 9:00 a.m. at 1:00 p.m. implies compliance with health measures against COVID-19.

With all his lights, he awaits the look ready to feel and dialogue with the purest truth of Oscar Lasseria, because Blanco & Negro is the certainty of a full man at 70 years of age. Congratulations.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez