José Ángel Toirac

(b. Guantánamo, 1966)

José Ángel Toirac graduated from San Alejandro School of Fine Arts in 1985, and from the Superior Institute of Art in 1990. He has more than twenty solo exhibitions and his work can be found in the collections of institutions such as the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany; and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, Canada. Some of his most notable solo exhibitions include Mass: Portraits (CENCREM, Havana, Cuba, 1995 / Schloss Stolberg, Aachen, Germany, 1995); Mediations II (Habana Gallery, Havana 2002); Sacrifice (Gallery 106, Austin, Texas, USA, 2003); Think Different (Art in General, New York, 2002); In Good We Trust, America’s Most Wanted (with Lorin McAlpin and Meira Marrero. La Casona Gallery, Havana, Cuba, 2009) and Censure and Celebration in Cuba (PULSE Fair, Miami, USA, 2009). In 2007 the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana presented his project Orbis: Tribute to Walker Evans (with Meira Marrero), which was awarded the National Curatorship Award, granted by the National Council of Visual Arts of the Cuban Ministry of Culture. He received this award again in 2014 for his project Mare Magnum, Mare Nostrum, presented at Habana Gallery in Havana in 2013. Toirac’s works have been included in group exhibition, such as The American Effect at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003; and New to the Modern: Recent Acquisitions from the Department of Drawings at MoMA in 2001. He has received fellowships from the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany (1996); the Institute for Studies in the Arts, Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona (1998 and 2000); the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island (2001); the College of Fine Arts at the University of Kentucky (2001); Art in General in New York City (2002); the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont (2002); and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2004).

Selected Works