Carlos Gamez de Francisco is a Cuban-born, Kentucky-based painter whose dreamlike canvases fuse Renaissance portraiture, surrealist wit, and a lifelong belief that beauty is a form of resistance. Raised in post-revolutionary Cuba where art supplies were scarce and creativity was survival, Carlos Gamez de Francisco arrived in the United States at twenty-one with $650 and a vision — spending $600 on art supplies and selling out his first solo gallery show within months.
Trained in the rigorous Soviet-influenced academies of Cuba and the conceptual freedom of the Art Institute of Chicago, he creates richly layered paintings populated by animals in period finery, women obscured by cascades of flowers, and domestic scenes charged with memory, humor, and coded meaning. Represented by Portland Art Gallery, Carlos Gamez de Francisco creates work that is at once technically commanding and quietly radical.
What does an artist carry across borders when everything else has to be left behind — and what does beauty mean to someone who learned to make paint from toothpaste and diesel?