“Looking for Hemingway” in Cuba

Italian painter Franco Azzinari, who declares himself to be in love with Cuba, its culture and its people, will open the exhibition “Looking for Hemingway” on December 10th at Finca Vigía, the place where the writer lived in Cuba.

Azzinari has visited the island 59 times since 1992 and has painted some 200 paintings linked to his experiences on the island.
He said that when he visited Finca Vigía and met Cojimar’s fishermen, some of whom had met Ernest Hemingway, he became inspired and painted portraits of them, the places related to the U.S. writer, and the flamboyant trees he admired so much.

He also expressed that he has already received proposals to exhibit these pieces in several universities and plans to bring the topic of Hemingway and Cuba to many centers for higher studies in the world.

Azzinari specified that he has never met the 1953 Nobel Literature Prize winner personally, but that he was a friend of Gregorio Fuentes, the skipper of his yacht El Pilar, who was very close to the notable writer.
He also visited the places in which Hemingway used to fish marlins and swordfish in Havana, as well as Kenya, where he contacted members of the masai tribe that participated in the hunting safaris organized by the writer.

With respect to his artistic work, he declared that he has never worked for money and that he keeps most of his pieces, many of which are located in a personal museum that exists in the city of Calabria, following an initiative of the municipal administration of Altomonte in Cosenza.