Would you like to see the artwork in our exhibitions before anyone else? Join the collectors preview. 

Joherms Quiala Brooks is a formally trained painter who brings his own Cuban twist to a Daliesque form of surrealism. His paintings frequently contain beautifully rendered mysteries which the viewer must try to unravel in order to decipher the true meaning of the piece. His seductive and intriguing works present commentaries on the modern Cuban cultural experience. Quiala was born between the sea and the mountains in Guantánamo where he attended the School of Fine Arts. From there, he was accepted at Havana’s National Art School where he was able to broaden his education by attending art expositions and theater and reading current literature about art. This opened his eyes to many of the different cultures in his own country.
From Havana, Quiala went on to study in Santiago de Cuba where he came into the realm of Carlos René Aguilera and his father, Aguilera Vincente and, in 1989, Quiala was appointed as a professor of engraving and drawing at the José Joaquín Tecada Art Academy. Here he found more freedom to break the molds of traditional artistic expression.
Quiala embodies the philosophy of José Martí, Cuba’s independence leader, who observed that everyone is a product of the period in which he lives. He feels that it is his responsibility to speak of the events which have marked Cuban life in recent years. Quiala portrays the use of the U.S. dollar in Cuban society and the prevalence of the sex trade and its relationship to the dollar. In Juego rentado (Rented Games), he shows us two nubile young women floating on a magical dollar bill carpet above the lecherous men beneath them. He continues this theme by portraying the effect of the dollar on the people
in rural areas. Mi tio el que llegó del norte (My Uncle Who Arrived from the North) shows a detailed, hyper-realistic green- skinned man leaning on a dollar-wrapped pole against a background replication of a sere rural town.
We see other recurring themes in Quiala’s work; the broken glass; the unmistakable red color and shape of cans of Coca- Cola; the pressure cooker and the unctuously draped cloak. His meticulously rendered landscapes are festooned with drops of
blood, ropes dangling from the sky or slashes in the canvas. They provoke us to question what may be lurking under all that natural beauty. In one of his landscapes he portrays Christ secured to the cross with sickles rather than nails, and in
another a crown of thorns spraying blood defiles the beauty of the Cuban countryside.
Quiala is able to combine his visual message with his cultural experience. His images are subjective with a heavy semantic force and reveal the influence of Salvador Dali. His
unexpected juxtapositions of tranquil landscapes and bleeding religious symbols emphasize his concern for the state of his country. However, despite all his symbolism, we frequently see Quiala using the Cuban gift of bringing humor into even the worst situations, making a joke about the problems of life, about the dreams deferred.