Private Collection, California Acquired from the above by the present owner
Catalogue Essay
Although Esterio Segura studied sculpture, he works in many mediums including drawing, painting, film and photography. Despite the negative social climate that led many fellow artists to depart Cuba, Segura chose to remain in his home country where he uses iconic images from mythology, history and religious art to project witty political messages and parodic questions about Cuban history. In the present work, Segura portrays Peter the Great conquering Cuba, depicting him as a Communist symbol riding a regal horse. Segura reminds viewers of Peter’s successful Tsardom and his cultural revolution that replaced the previous socio-political system with a modern, westernized version based on the Enlightment, converting Russia into a major European power. Ironically, Russia and Cuba today symbolize Communism, whose leaders led successful revolutions that replaced the old socio-political systems with dictatorial regimes. Thus, the great economic and cultural powers that Russia and Cuba once were have come to symbolize violence, human cruelty, alienation and injustice. Segura has exhibited quite extensively, including the recent exhibition Adiós Utopía: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950 that opened at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in 2017 and continued on to the Walker Art Center later that year.
Contemporary Cuba: Works from a Private Collection