Art

Perez emigrated to the United States as a teenager and has focused his artistic career primarily on documenting the pre-war Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

 of his youth. He is noted for his urban landscapes often recreated from memory. His work has become especially popular in Cuban expatriate

Expatriate

An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...

 communities, such as in south Florida, where collectors celebrate his ability to recapture the tone and atmosphere of 1940s and 1950s Cuba before the revolution

Revolution

A revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...

. Perez works primarily in a combination of pen/ink and watercolor, though some of his most noted (and most overtly political) work appears in oil on canvas. These include "La Muerte de José Martí

José Martí

José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. In his short life he was a poet, an essayist, a journalist, a revolutionary philosopher, a translator, a professor, a publisher, and a political theorist. He was also a part of the Cuban...

", depicting the death of the Cuban national hero and poet who led the nation's independence movement against Spain, and who died in a charge during the Battle of Dos Rios

Battle of Dos Ríos

The Battle of Dos Ríos was fought in Cuba during its war of independence from Spain.José Martí died fighting in the battle of Dos Ríos . He was leading a group of rebels against the Spanish royalist army in the first skirmish in Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain...

.

Perez is also known for his work in charcoal, in particular his series of portraits of jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 musicians, many of whom performed in Cuba prior to the country's fall to communism.
As an untrained artist who grew up on the impoverished streets of Havana, Perez's family had no money to purchase art supplies, leaving him drawing with broken pencil nubs on scraps of paper. He left Cuba permanently at the age of 15, after the death of his mother, and did not return for more than 40 years. A visit to Cuba in 2000, after receiving an entry visa from Fidel Castro

Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...

's government, led to a particularly productive period in his work.

Perez's style is classified as primitive art, also called naive art

Naïve art

Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...

, a category used to describe notable work produced by artists without formal schooling, such as Grandma Moses

Grandma Moses

Anna Mary Robertson Moses , better known as "Grandma Moses", was a renowned American folk artist. She is often cited as an example of an individual successfully beginning a career in the arts at an advanced age. Although her family and friends called her either "Mother Moses" or "Grandma Moses,"...

, and which captures instinctive artistic expressions without the typical conventions and uniformity of classically educated instruction.

"Both my goal and the source of my creative enjoyment is to create work that stirs positive feelings in the observer", Perez has stated. "My ultimate hope is that these feelings create a passionate connection between the observer and the particular artwork they're viewing. If I succeed at creating this connection, it means I have successfully transferred the same feelings and passion I felt during the creative process."

Family

Perez has a wife, Margaret, and three children. He has two grandchildren from daughter Kimberly; his other daughter, the journalist Jennifer Perez, is a former Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

reporter and co-author of several travel books. Perez currently resides in Long Beach, California.

External links

• Official Site