Juan David
A Cuban artist with caricature as a favourite medium!
Born in April 1911 in Cienfuegos, a town on the southern coast of Cuba, Juan Eduardo David Posada or "Juan David", is a Cuban artist best known for his drawings, illustrations, caricatures and paintings. Today he is the only caricaturist whose works are on permanent display at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana.
He entered the art world at the age of 20, producing around thirty caricatures of personalities of the time and a few charcoal portraits. Among the great names captured by his pencil there are the painter Picasso, the dancer Alicia Alonso, the writers Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Neruda and the musician Igor Stravinsky.
He already had his own vision and style that prevailed in all his works: he captured the very soul of the person, going far beyond the appearance.
During his youth the reals artists were learning everything by themselves: by rummaging through old books, looking up in art magazines and admiring reproductions of great works.
The teaching of plastic arts in Cuba was only available at the San Alejandro Academy. In Cienfuegos, public education stopped at the level of middle school. To go further, one had to go to Santa Clara. Some private schools, however, allowed further school education. In one of them, a very modest one, David was able to study till the second year of high school. However at the age of fifteen he had to leave classroom and find a job due to difficult financial situation in the family.
His teenage years were not the easy ones: he used to be a pharmacy assistant, an employee in a shoe store, a shop assistant and even a cleaner in a hotel without stars.
In 1936, he married Graziela de Armas, his wife for life, and they both moved to Havana. In the island's capital, his caricatures were soon published in the local newspapers. Thus, for more than forty years, he had successfully employed the graphic art of political criticism, winning the Juan Gualberto Gómez National Journalism Prize twice, in 1947 and 1948.
His weak health subsequently led to his death on August 8, 1981. A master of Cuban caricature and an important figure in Cuban art, Juan David made caricature his main means of expression. From his adolescence he showed his artistic vocation with a force that nothing and nobody could stop.
To learn more about the story of Juan David, we would be delighted to welcome you to our Cultural Space, where you will find original caricatures.
(Piece from our private collection)
For more information, contact us on +41 22 552 2799