Antonio Eligio Fernández (Tonel)

EDUCATION
1977-1982 Licenciatura in Art History, The University of Havana, Cuba.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2006 Una música del cuerpo. Paolo Maria Deanesi Gallery, Trento, Italy.
2003 Cuaderno de Bitácora. Ilustraciones a cuatro manos de Fernando Birri y Tonel (Bitácora Notebook: Four Hand Illustrations by Fernando Birri and Tonel). Galería Latinoamericana, Casa de las Américas, Havana, Cuba.
____ Conversación con “La primera carga…” (A Conversation with ‘The First Charge…’). Galería La Casona, Havana, Cuba.
2002 Tonel. Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
____ Autorretrato con ciudad: Limón (Self-Portrait with City: Lemon). Santander International Airport, Santander, Spain.
____ Tonel: Recent Works on Paper. Gallery 106, Austin, Texas, U.S.A.
2001 Some of the Houses, Several Documents, the Rocket. Detour 888, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
____ Tonel: Lessons of Solitude. Art in General, New York, New York, U.S.A.
2000 Tonel: Lessons of Solitude. Morris & Helen Belkin Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
1997 Self-Portraits. (Part of the project New Art from Cuba: Utopian Territories, with René Francisco Rodríguez and Eduardo Ponjuán). Or Gallery, Vancouver, Canada.
____ Another Self-Portrait As an Organic Intellectual (Another Tribute to Antonio Gramsci). Fundación Ludwig de Cuba, Havana, Cuba.
1996 Tonel. Krings-Ernst Galerie, Cologne, Germany.
1995 Cuatro obras: las partes que más me sudan…(Four Works: The Parts Where I Sweat the Most…) Fundación Ludwig de Cuba / CENCREM, Havana, Cuba.
____ Tonel. Centro Cultural de la Municipalidad de Miraflores, Lima, Perú.
1994 Acuarelas y dibujos (Watercolours and Drawings). Galería Habana, Havana, Cuba.
1993 Tonel. Stadtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.
1992 Luis Gómez-Tonel. Kulturhaus Latin Amerika, Cologne, Germany.
____ Kuba in Aachen (with Luis Gómez). Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany.
1991 La felicidad (Happiness). Private home of the artist, Havana, Cuba.
1989 Yo lo que quiero es ser feliz (All I Want is to Be Happy). Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes-Castillo de la Real Fuerza, Havana, Cuba.
1986 Dibujos, acuarelas, etc. (Drawings, Watercolours, etc.). Museo Provincial de Villa Clara, Santa Clara, Cuba.
____ Clásicos de Tonel (Classics by Tonel). Galería L, Havana, Cuba.
1983 El eterno verano (The Eternal Summer). Galería L, Havana, Cuba.
____ Tonel expone en Santa Cruz (Tonel Exhibits in Santa Cruz). Museo Histórico de Santa Cruz del Norte, Havana, Cuba.

FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, AND RESIDENCIES
2003 Cuban Artists Fund Award. Cuban Artists Fund, New York, New York, USA.
1997 Senior Fellow. Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities. The Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery, The University of Texas at Austin, USA.
1995 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (Painting and Installation Art), New York, New York, USA.
1995 Artist in Residence. West Walls Studios and Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, Cumbria, UK.
1992 Artist in Residence. Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany.
____ Collective Award, Cuban entry. Primera Bienal de Pintura de Centroamérica y el Caribe (First Painting Biennial of Central America and the Caribbean), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
1991 Grant for research and art criticism from the Association of Visual Artists of the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), Havana, Cuba.
1991 Award for Art Criticism, given by the Cuban section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) for the essays: “Cuban Art: The Key to the Gulf and How to Use It”, and “Notes on the Changing of the Guard”. Havana, Cuba.
1988 Traveling Grant, Cultural Office of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
1984 “Rafael Blanco” Honorary Mention. Primera Bienal de La Habana (I Havana Biennial), Havana, Cuba.

SELECTED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2005-06 Member, International Advisory Board, and Main Speaker. International Conference on Arts in Society (organized by Common Ground, Australia, in
conjunction with the Edinburgh Festivals, Scotland.)
2005 Curatorial Advisor for exhibition Afro-Cuba: Works on Paper, Art Gallery, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, USA. Served as advisor to Dr. Judith Bettelheim on exhibition featuring Cuban printmaking after 1959.
2004 Co-curator with Anjee Helstrup and David Spalding. “Rogue Nations:” Cuban & Chinese Artists. Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA), San José, California, USA.
2001 Co-curator, with Dr. Tressa Berman, of the educational exhibit A Walk on the Town: Art and Identity in Havana’s Chinatown, Treganza Anthropology Museum, San Francisco State University, California, USA.
1999 Resident artist and art critic. Big River International Artists Workshop, organized by Caribbean Contemporary Arts, Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies. Work consisted of a painting-based intervention at the local headquarters of a Steel-Band in the villa of Grande Riviere. Based on this experience, I wrote an essay, “Al remontar el río y entre los árboles: notas a la memoria de un taller (Up the River and into the Trees: Notes in Memory of a Workshop), an excerpt of which is published in the Big River catalog. The entire essay appears in Artecubano, Havana, No. 2, 1999.
1996-2005 Member. Editorial Board, Revista Artecubano (Artecubano Magazine). Havana, National Council for The Visual Arts.
1995 Advisor to curators Laurie Short and James Peto for their exhibit New Art from Cuba, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, and Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, U.K. Wrote the introductory essay for this exhibition.
1993 Member of the International Resource Group for the project, Memoria. Archivo de Artes Visuales Cubanas del siglo XX [Memory. Archive of 20th Century Cuban Visual Arts], sponsored by The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities (USA) and the Pablo Milanes Foundation (Cuba).
1992 Advisor for installation and didactic labels, for the exhibition Von dort aus: Kuba, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany, and Brandts Klaedefabrik Kunsthalle, Odense, Denmark.
1990-92 Member. Editorial Board of the literary magazine La Gaceta de Cuba, Havana, Cuba.
1990 Co-curator, with Jürgen Harten, Director of the Düsseldorf Stadtische Kuntshalle, of the exhibition Kuba o.k. (Düsseldorf Kuntshalle, April-May).
1986-1990 Advisor to and coordinator of Telarte, a project of the Cuban Ministry of Culture to massively produce prints of textile designs by Cuban and foreign artists (among them Robert Rauschenberg, Luis Camnitzer, Shigeo Fukuda).
1989 Exhibited and wrote the introductory essay for Humor Cubano (Cuban Humor), a group exhibition that was one of the Special Events at the 20th São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil.
1988 Consultant for curator Charles Merewether for the exhibition Made in Havana at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Attended the opening and, with artist Ricardo Rodríguez Brey, gave talks on Cuban art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and at the Australia-Cuba Friendship Association in Sydney.
1985 Curator, Cuban Section in the international group exhibition 40 Years of Victory Over Fascism, Manezh Gallery, Moscow, USSR.
1983-90 Specialist at the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales (Center for the Development of the Visual Arts), formerly Dirección de Artes Plásticas y Diseño del Ministerio de Cultura (DAPD) (Division of Visual Arts of the Ministry of Culture) in Havana, Cuba.
Duties included curatorial and advisory work. At different times during a seven year-period I supervised programming and schedules at the municipal galleries and the main provincial galleries (Centros Provinciales de Arte) in three Cuban provinces: Guantánamo, Pinar del Río and Villa Clara. I took frequent trips outside of Havana to take part in conferences, juried events and openings at these provinces’ main galleries.
I coordinated the Telarte project, spending several weeks every year at the Desembarco del Granma textile factory in Villa Clara, Cuba. Gained valuable hands-on experience with textile printing and textile industrial process.
For a year I was in charge of the visual arts page in the weekly cultural tabloid Cartelera, and supervised a journalist at that publication. Wrote short exhibitions reviews, exhibitions ads and press releases. I organized press conferences for the DAPD Director and handled press relations.

CONFERENCE AND PANEL PARTICIPATION
2006 Panelist. “The Art of the State.” Art History, Visual Art and Theory Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. This panel was
held in conjunction with the exhibition “Certain Encounters” at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC.
2004 Lecturer. “Visual Arts in Cuba and Their Context In-Between Two Centuries.” Cuba From the Inside Looking Out. Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, USA.
2003 Panelist. Cuban Culture: Cuban Art Today at The New School. The New School, New York, New York, USA.
2001 Panelist. Cuban Research Institute Conference, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA.
____ Lecturer. Southern Graphics Council Coference, Austin, Texas.
Presented a lecture on parallel developments and convergences between printmaking and painting in post-1959 Cuban art.
1999 Panelist. Southern Graphics Council Conference, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA.
Presented a paper on the development of printmaking as part of large scale installation work in Cuba during the 1990s.
1996 Panelist. Casa de America, Madrid, Spain. Panel discussion on contemporary art of Cuba. The panel was held in conjunction with the group exhibition Mundo soñado [Dream World], named after an installation by Tonel.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- “On Some Encounters in Havana: The Latin American Factor in Cuba’s post-1959 Art Scene.” In Certain Encounters. Daros-Latinamerica Collection. Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2006.
- “A Fingernail on the Floor and a Finger Up the Nose.” In Trust Me: Tony Labat. San Francisco: New Langton Arts, 2005.
- “The Island, the Map, the Travelers: Notes on Recent Developments in Cuban Art.” boundary 2 no. 29 (Fall 2002), pp. 77-89.
- “Trece que fueron uno.” In Déjame que te cuente: antología de la crítica en los 80. Havana: Consejo Nacional de las Artes Plásticas, 2002.
- “Culture and Society in the Work of Cuban Artists.” In Art Cuba: The New Generation, Holly Block, ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001.
- “The Art of Passion: A Reckoning.” In Passionately Cuban: Nine Artists from Havana. Albany: The University at Albany New York, 2001.
- “Cuban Art: The Key to the Gulf and How to Use It” and “Cuban Art: The Path of Humor.” In Memoria. Cuban Art of The 20th Century. Australia: Crafstman House, 2001.
- “A Tree from Many Shores: Cuban Art in Movement.” Art Journal (Winter 1998), pp. 63-73.
- “La viva estampa de la América Latina.” In Casa de las Américas, no. 202 (January-March 1996), pp. 131-134.
- “70, 80, 90…tal vez 100 impresiones sobre el arte en Cuba.” In Cuba Siglo XX: Modernidad y Sincretismo. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), 1996.
- “New Art from Cuba.” In New Art from Cuba. London/Carlisle: Whitechapel Art Gallery/Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, 1995.
- “Kcho.” In Quinta Bienal de La Habana. Havana: Centro Wifredo Lam, 1994.
- “Tania Bruguera.” In Quinta Bienal de La Habana. Havana: Centro Wifredo Lam, 1994.
- “Alternative Humour and Comic Strips: Notes on the Cuban Case.” In The Unknown Face of Cuban Art. Sunderland, United Kingdom: Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, 1992.
- “Lázaro Saavedra.” In The Nearest Edge of the World. Boston: Massachusetts College of Arts, 1990.
- “Ricardo Rodríguez Brey” In Kuba o.k.: Aktuelle Kunst aus Kuba/Arte actual de Cuba. Düsseldorf: Stadtische Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, 1990.
- “Cuban Art: A Key to the Gulf and How to Use it.” In No Man is an Island. Pori, Finland: Pori Taidemuseo, 1990. Also in Aktuelle Kunst aus Kuba. Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 1990.
- “Der schlussel des Golfs: Zur kubanischen kunst.” In Bildende Kunst, no.4, (1989), pp. 22-29.
- “Tomás Esson Reid.” In Jóvenes artistas de la R.D.A. y Cuba. Havana/Berlin: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes/Neue Berliner Galerie im Altem Museum, 1989.
- “Humor em Cuba.” In 20ª Bienal de São Paulo. Special Events. São Paulo: Bienal de São Paulo, 1989.

ILLUSTRATION AND GRAPHIC DESIGN
2004 Illustrator. Birthday in the Barrio/ Cumpleaños en el Barrio. San Francisco: Children’s Book Press.
2003 Illustrator. Drum Chavi Drum!/ ¡Toca Chavi toca! San Francisco: Children’s Book Press.
____ Illustrator. Poster for the XVIII Festival del Cinema Latinoamericano. Trieste, Italy: Associazione per la promozione della cultura latino americana in Italia.
1992 Illustration and design. Poster and catalog cover for the exhibition La Ronda Cubana. Appeldoorn, The Netherlands: Van Reekum Museum.
1992. Illustrator. Poster for the exhibition Von dort aus: Kuba. Aachen, Germany: Ludwig Forum.
1986 Illustration and design. Poster for the feature film Como la vida misma [Like life itself], directed by Victor Casaus. Havana: Cuban Institute of Cinema Arts and Industry (ICAIC).
1984 Illustration and design (with Osmani Simanca). Poster-map of Old Havana, first in a series of similar prints on other Cuban tourist sites. Havana: National Institute of Tourism (INTUR).
1979-2000. Regular contributor as illustrator and cartoonist to several Cuban periodicals, among them: D.D.T; Revolución y Cultura; El Caimán Barbudo.

ARTISTS’ BOOKS
2005 Currently working on a book project with Uruguayan writer and poet Enrique Fierro, as part of the Visiting Artists Program at the Art and Art History Department, the University of Texas at Austin.
1999 Estuve casi todo el invierno en Rheinlandia escribiendo estos boleros (A Fully Illustrated Winter Book)
____ Twelve pages of litho-offset; silk-screen printing, edition of twenty four plus two artists proof.
1983 El manual del contento (The Handbook of the Joyful Man)
Linocut on hand made paper, edition of two.

MUSEUM COLLECTIONS
Ludwig Museum Peking, Beijing, China.
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba.
Museo del Humor, San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba.
Museo Provincial de Villa Clara, Santa Clara, Cuba.
Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia.
Museo de Arte Costarricense, San José, Costa Rica.
Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany.
Van Reekum Museum, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands.
Arizona State University Museum. Tempe, Arizona, USA.
Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA.
Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA.
Daros-Latinamerica AG, Zurich, Switzerland.

LANGUAGES
Fluency in English and Spanish.