Carlos Alfonzo

Carlos Alfonzo (*1950, Havana, Cuba - *1991, Miami, Florida) was a significant creative innovator contributing to Miami’s role as a center of artistic force. As a prodigious talent working in Cuba under Castro’s Communist Regime, cautiously navigating the personal and artistic repressions of post-revolutionary life as a queer artist, he became disenchanted with the sociopolitical climate and developed a visual vocabulary to translate these frictions. Leaving a legacy of authentic, poignant, and emotive artwork, Carlos Alfonzo passed in 1991 from AIDS-related complications but remains one of the leading voices of contemporary, figurative abstraction to emerge from Miami. Today, his work forms part of the permanent collections of world-renowned institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC), The Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC), The John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art (Sarasota, FL), and the Lowe Art Museum (Miami, FL).