This is a stunning portrait of Lydia Pla de Osuna, wife of Dr. Ramón G. Osuna Varela. The Osuna family is an important reference in the history of Cuban private art collecting; they had a particular interest in contemporary Cuban production of the moment, including emerging artists at the time, such as Agustín Fernández. In this work, which belongs to the representational period developed by the artist in the 1950s, contrasting planes of color appear within a Cubist-inspired space, which generates a warm pictorial surface despite the palette oriented toward shades of gray. The sophisticated chromatic treatment, not exempt from transparencies and color displacements, contributes to a composition that condenses lyrical and geometric abstraction with realistic figuration as if the artist were experimenting with the limits between these languages.

A graduate of the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro in 1950, Fernández is considered one of the most influential artists to emerge from the last generation of the Cuban avant-garde. Identified as an abstract painter and a Surrealist, Fernandez’s work has evolved through Dadaism, Pop art, conceptualism, and minimalism since he left the island around 1959.