Manzanillo, Cuba, 1938

Ever Fonseca is a painter, sculptor and ceramist. He graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in Havana in 1967. Fonseca is a member of the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) and the UNESCO International Association of Art (IAA). He has served on the board of several international fine arts festivals and has taught painting for more than twenty years.

Ever is a born creator of myths, recreating the Cuban popular universe, especially that of the countryside from which he himself came. His work combines poetry, naïve lyricism, and references to neosurrealism as seen through its local assimilations. Since his first solo show in 1971 his work has been dominated by drawing. A strong line, like the lead of a stained-glass window, outlines his heroes and animals, tinted with an earthy coloration that recalls the backgrounds of traditional paintings from New Guinea. The works that first made Ever known in 1970 were enormous canvases with a profusion of beings, elementary idols with stick-figure bodies recalling those of Victor Braunner; a recreation of the fundamental concerns of human nature: genesis, the gods, death, the hero.

Fonseca has received numerous awards, including the First Prize in Painting at the Salon’70, organized by the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, 1970; the Prix National at the International Painting Festival in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, 1971; and the First Award at the International “Joan Miró” Drawing Contest in Barcelona, Spain, 1972.

In 2005, the artist was recognized with a “Man of the Year” Award from the American Biographical Institute in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 2012, Fonseca received the National Visual Arts Award for his lifetime achievements, granted by the Cuban Ministry of Culture.

His works are part of the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Vilnius, Lithuania, the National Museum in Szczecin, Poland; the Museum of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Germany; and the Cuenca Museum of Modern Art in Cuenca, Ecuador, among other important public and private collections.