Miguel Díaz Salinero

Miguel Díaz Salinero (1874-1944)

One of the more exceptional painters from Güines, with an extensive artwork throughout his life, being a portrait painter with special talent and ability. He was born in Güines on February 2, 1874. He went to Havana as a teenager for high school studies and later on, to Pharmacy School, that he left during its last year to immerse himself completely in the study of painting. His admission to San Alejandro Academy coincided with the first course taught by Master Leopoldo Romañach (1862-1951) on his return from Spain. Díaz Salinero was his first student. Maybe this explains why the painter leaned more toward anecdotic themes in which his master began a whole generation and did not go into landscapes a genre then considered minor, even though among the painting manifestations at the end of the XIX Century, this one had made a major contribution to the rapprochement of the Academy to a national art.

That is why during his entire lifetime, Díaz Salinero was a faithful interpreter of lessons learned in drawing and coloring classes, and because of this, his work was incapable of surmounting the Hispanic and Italian tendencies within Cuban painting at the beginning of the last century.

In his first period, he copied with diligence and dexterity works of historical significance such as The Surrender of Granada by Francisco Pradilla Ortiz (1848-1921) donated by him to the Casino Español (Spanish Society Social Club) of his native city and painted portraits of Alfonso XII, Queen María Cristina and George Washington. He also painted landscapes and flowers and collaborated with Cuba and America magazine. In 1915 he organized Floral Games in Güines Lyceum Social Club, and due to his initiative, this institution created the José Martí Gold Medal, as a prize to the winners of the literary contest sponsored in such Games which was national in its scope. He also taught painting classes in Redención (Redemption) Academy sponsored by the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (Economic Society Friends of the Country) for more than thirty years. But without any doubt his development as a portrait painter was the factor that gave him the most fame within Republican painting circles.

This moment marks the beginning of what we can call his second period. He continues his preference for historical themes, but contrary to his first period, he concentrates more in the portrait, in particular, those of the major characters of Cuba's Independence War. Among others, we can highlight the portrait of Generalissimo Máximo Gómez for Havana's Veterans Center, the one about the eight medical school students executed by firing squad in 1871 for the Medical Federation and, above all, those he made about José Martí.

The attachment of his painting to this patriotic subject matter made Díaz Salinero one of the most prolific Martí painters during the decades between 1920 to 1940 of the XX Century. His portraits shaped the Apostle's physiognomy in the three most frequent poses within the genre: the bust, three quarter and whole body poses. In all cases, and in agreement with his other contemporary painters, his models were photographic pictures of Martí during his lifetime. This sustained iconographic appropriation process allowed him to conceive as many Martís as facts and occupations marked the different stages of his life as a writer and revolutionary.

Due to this painting work, the fact that Díaz Salinero was the founder of Casa Natal de José Martí Museum (Birth House of José Martí) and an Honorary Member of such institution since 1924, his daughter Mirta Díaz Betancourt, in 1972 donated to Fermín Valdés Domínguez Library the last eleven oil paintings of the Apostle painted by her father between 1940 and 1943. The following year, on January 10, Miguel Díaz Salinero died.

Continue to: Mariano Domínguez Vela