With two more weeks to experience Mendive’s ode to the joy of life!
The exhibition Manuel Mendive: With the new day the sun shines and leads us features the artist’s most recent series of works created between 2023 and 2025, alongside a curated selection of key earlier pieces.
A total of 46 works by Mendive are exhibited, offering a comprehensive insight into the evolution of his creative vision.
«Mendive’s latest body of work is a renewed expression of hope and gratitude for life,” says the gallery owner Israel Moleiro, who curated the show. «We are honored to present this grand exhibition, which includes both Mendive’s newest works and iconic earlier pieces that have defined his career.”
Now 80 years old, Mandive’s latest works reaffirm his role as a visionary who bridges ancestral knowledge and contemporary expression. His work is an invitation to reconnect with nature’s rhythms and the spiritual forces that shape existence.
In these recent works, the narrated stories unfold with the wise serenity of inert time. Mendive avoids grandiose gestures; he teaches us to see the things you look at when you have eyes But do not truly see.
This new body of work marks a fresh chapter in his artistic journey: while still rooted in Afro-Cuban spirituality and Yoruba cosmology, Mendive’s latest pieces shine with a renewed focus on the joy of living and the harmonious union of the individual with nature.
“To enter the most recent pictorial offerings of Manuel Mendive (Havana, 1944) is to delve into a cosmogony where flesh and foliage pulse with the same breath. Color in these paintings seems to emanate as if the canvas were a living membrane, exhaling blues, ochres, and chlorophyll greens that gracefully interweave in a vibrato echoing life itself. Here, the bird does not merely perch on a branch —it is the branch. The man does not walk upon wáter he is the water. The fish does not swim through the river—it embodies it”, writes Janet Batet in the exhibition’s catalogue.
“My path towards mysticism and the search for happiness in art began at a very young age, influenced by family traditions, my mother, my connection with Afro- Cuban spirituality, my trips to Africa, and my love for nature. That is why in my work, I have explored the relationship between the human being and the universe, using symbols and colors that evoke the sacred and the ancestral”, explains Manuel Mendive Nature has always been central to Mendive’s creative path. When asked if it continues to inspire his work, he responds:
«Nature is not simply a reflection; it gives us strength, it gives us life. It is also a manifestation of the human being itself. I’m captivated by the profound relationship between the individual, spiritual energies, and the natural world, where each element intertwines in an unbreakable harmony.»
His most recent works exalt the beauty and joy of living life, in the words of maestro Mendive: “that the flowers may not wither, that we are all together united under the gaze of the all-seeing universe.”.. “Because it is not me or you, it is all of us”
His work has been exhibited at the Venice, São Paulo, and Ha- Vana Biennials, as well as at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the California African American Museum the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, and the Atlan- Tic Center of Modern Art in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, among many others.
His work is part of major collections, including:
• Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, USA
• California African American Museum, Los Angeles, USA
• Frost Museum, Miami, USA
• Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, FRANCE
• National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, CUBA
• Emilio Bacardí Museum, Santiago de Cuba, CUBA
• Museum of Modern Art of Panama (PANARTE), PANAMA
• Museum of Modern Art, Cartagena de Indias, COLOMBIA
• Ethnographic Museum of Budapest, Budapest, HUNGARY
• Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, FRANCE
• Atlantic Center of Modern Art, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, SPAIN
• Sa Nostra Foundation, Palma de Mallorca, SPAIN
• France Libertés Foundation, Paris, FRANCE
• Joan Guaita Art Gallery, Palma de Mallorca, SPAIN
• National Museum of Tanzania, TANZANIA
• John F. Kennedy Center, Washington, USA
• Gary Nader Art Gallery, Miami, USA
• SEIBU Group, Tokyo, JAPAN
• Cultural Center of Manila, PHILIPPINES
• National Gallery, Kingston, JAMAICA
• Mpapa Gallery, Lusaka, NIGERIA
• Hamiltyon Lee, Hong Kong, CHINA
• Luciano Méndez Collection
MENDIVE: With the new day, the sun shines and leads us
is open to art lovers through August 30, 2025
At the Latin Art Core Gallery
1648 SW 8th Street, Miami
open to the public Monday to Saturday, 11 AM to 6 PM.
@lac.contemporary
