Abel Barroso is a cuban plastic artist born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba in1971. His work has been exhibited in Cuban and foreign galleries obtaining numerous noted awards. His works are in major national and international collections. Between Havana and New York there is much more than a mere synchronicity in time zones, or the existence of a “Cuban Wall Street” with banks and trade centers built in Old Havana. The connection did not end with the Cuban emigration en masse that settled in New York in the 19th century—among whose luminaries were Father Varela, who served as a parish priest to Irish workers, and José Martí, who in fifteen years of exile witnessed the confident yet alarming (to Cuban nationalists) growth of the United States. In the 20th century, emigration to New York continued unabated during the governments of Cuban presidents Machado and Batista, and even Fidel Castro walked with empty pockets through Central Park, before his 1959 encounter with Malcolm X at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem.
