Ana Albertina Delgado Álvarez

Biography

In 1984, when the first Havana Biennial opened, Ana Albertina Delgado, then a student at the Instituto Superior de Arte, already took part in the exhibition “El ISA Saluda la Bienal” at Galería L. In the same days the institute’s group Vinculación, to which she belonged, put on its own exhibition as a collateral event.

She was born on 8 April 1963 in Havana.

She began her studies at the San Alejandro school of fine arts in Havana, then entered the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) and graduated in 1988. In the 1980s she was a member of two Havana groups, Vinculación and Puré. I have little information on what each group did or on her own part in it, so I will not try to describe their programmes. She herself works in painting, drawing, installation and photography. Her first awards came while she was still a student. In 1985 she received a mention in photography and drawing at the “13 de Marzo” contest in Havana. In 1986 she won the prize of the XVI Seminario Juvenil de Estudios Martianos, a youth seminar on the writings of José Martí, at the ISA. In 1987 she received a mention at the Salón Playa ’87 at the Galería Servando Cabrera Moreno.

In 1989 her solo exhibition “Dentro del Labio” was held in the project Castillo de la Fuerza, in the old Havana fortress of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza. That same year her work was shown in “Kitsch”, an exhibition accompanying the Third Havana Biennial. A second notable solo show, “La caja de los sueños”, opened at the Galería Nina Menocal in Mexico; by some accounts this was in 1990, by others in 1994. Around 1990 her work began to be shown outside Cuba. In 1990 she took part in “Kuba O.K. Aktuelle Kunst aus Kuba” at the Städtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and in 1991 in “The Nearest Edge of the World: Art and Cuba Now” at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York. In 1992 she was shown at the First Biennial of Painting of the Caribbean and Central America at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo. In 1997 she was among the artists in “Breaking Barriers”, at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, an exhibition drawn from that museum’s permanent collection of contemporary Cuban art.

Delgado’s works are held by the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, the Cuban Museum of Art and Culture in Miami and the Galería Nina Menocal in Mexico City. They are also in the museum of the University of Guadalajara in Mexico and in the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale.