Nicolás Guillén
Period: Contemporary
1938 - 2003

The Drunk
El Borracho, 1988
gouache on paper
42 x 34 3/4 inches

Nicolás Guillén Landrián, painter and film maker, was born in 1938. “Nicolasito”, as he was known, was a nephew of the Afro Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén.

Nicolasito devoted part of his early artistic career to film, leaving a legacy of eighteen documentaries, some of which were considered to be critical of the prevailing political positions of the Revolution. For this he was briefly incarcerated, subjected to government mandated psychiatric treatment that included electroshock therapy, and excluded from the film industry in the island.

In Cuba he developed as a painter of expressionistic facial portraits of people he would see in the Havana streets.

In 1989 Nicolasito migrated to Florida and the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture in Miami presented his first one artist show to sell-out crowds. In 2002 Miami Dade College presented a one person show of his works at the Tower Theater. The artist died of pancreatic cancer in Miami, Florida on July 22, 2003.