SKU: 15721742256

Victor Huerta Batista - Arlequin

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Victor Huerta Batista - ArlequinDescription h: 28 x w: 21 in 70 x 52cm. pastel and gouache on paper 1998 Permanent collections: University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona Estremadura Museum of Art, Estremadura, Spain Extracted from an article in Tucson Weekly, on August 23, 2007, written by Margaret Regan: In "Caerse de Habana" (The Fall of Havana), 2002, three old men are struggling to hold up a figure above their bald heads. They're

 

Description - h: 28 x w: 21 in - 70 x 52cm.

pastel and gouache on paper - 1998

Permanent collections:
University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona
Estremadura Museum of Art, Estremadura, Spain


Extracted from an article in Tucson Weekly, on August 23, 2007, written by Margaret Regan:

 

In "Caerse de Habana" (The Fall of Havana), 2002, three old men are struggling to hold up a figure above their bald heads. They're decrepit caryatids long past their prime, but then so is the strongman they're trying to support. He's a fake, his body made of wood, pegged together at the joints, and he's collapsing. But Huerta's vision is too wild, too erotic--and too much fun--to be reined in by a single interpretation tied to contemporary politics. Elephant-headed old folks dance on a gargantuan pink birthday cake in "Feliz Cumpleaños" (Happy Birthday), 2003, just beyond a giant snake slithering in the hay around it. Above, the heads of four angry gods blow the small brushfire atop the cake into a conflagration. In other works, a tiny family sits on the precipice of a stove, just past a pot of boiling ship. A sexy woman with a cat's head writhes all naked on the shoulders of a man with a dog's head. Workmen on scaffolding lazily touch up the paint job on the face of a giant man.


Huerta practices what the Cubans call "lo real maravilloso" (the marvelous real), a counterpart to the magical realism in Latin-American literature. He counterbalances the realistic and the fantastic, placing recognizable figures, landscapes and buildings in impossible settings. He plays with imbalances of scale--see that mini-family on the stovetop--and "irrational space," juxtaposing sailing teacups with sailing ships.


Beautifully rendered in acrylics on canvas, his paintings are meant to look like oils, says Lisa Fischman, University Of Arizona Museum of Art curator. Even to the point that he's faked the sheen of oil glaze on top. He paints in a limited Old World palette, in browns, golds, yellows and ambers, with jolts of pale blue or red here and there. Some passages are thinly stained with color, while others have deft layerings of thick paint. Occasionally, Huerta allows paint to drip vertically all across the canvas, like rain, or tears.


The landscape of Cuba, often a backdrop to the fantastic goings-on, emerges in soft, blurry rows of palm trees and glints of light on rooftops. The sea greens of the Straits of Florida shimmer, and sunset skies turn chalky yellow.

 

The Old Masters can take credit for some of Huerta's wildness. His crazy machines have their roots in Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of flying contraptions, moving dykes, pulleys and cranks. Huerta's fantastic creatures, half-human, half-animal, and his apocalyptic visions owe a debt to Hieronymus Bosch. And his imagination, Fischman says, follows the free flights of Francisco Goya.


Which is how Huerta's works came to be displayed at the UAMA. Fischman and assistant curator Susannah Maurer were looking for a contemporary artist to pair with the second installment of the museum's four-part Goya etchings series. Last spring, works by Tucson rodeo photographer Louise Serpa went up next door to Goya's La Tauromaquia suite of bullfighting prints. This second Goya show, now on view, exhibits 24 etchings from Los Disparates, which the museum translates as "mad and absurd ideas", along with 20 paintings by Victor Huerta Batista. Filled with grotesque monsters, dreamlike phantoms and humans with bats' wings, the nightmare Disparates images are bathed in darkness. Goya worked on these pictures at the end of his life, and scholars have debated whether they represent his fears of death, or his horror at the catastrophic wars of his lifetime, or something else altogether. In any case, the curators thought, rightly, that Huerta's unruly work was a good match. They found his work via the MLA Gallery in Los Angeles, which handles his work and acted as intermediary. Huerta has had some success in Cuba, but this is the first time his extravagant visions have won a museum show in the United States.


"His imagination is unloosed," Fischman says. "He's an artist willing to see where that goes. That's a precedent that Goya set."


Correspondence: In Relation to Goya paintings by Victor Huerta Batista
Goya's Mastery in Prints: Los Disparates
University of Arizona Museum of Art, through Sept. 30th, 2007
Excerpts, and paintings on loan courtesy of MLA Gallery

 

 

For more info call us at (323) 744-7550, or to see a greater selection of the gallery work, please visit our Artnet site at:

http://www.artnet.com/artists/victor-huerta-batista/
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SKU: 15721742256

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robert ferrell
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★★★★★ 5
Good
Color: Black, Size: 6 Panel
Love it , just what so needed , easy to put together (some what ) …
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Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2026
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Crimm
Fort Morgan, US
★★★★★ 3
Decent for the price. Instructions suck but most people should be able to figure it out. More below.
Color: Black, Size: 6 Panel, Color: Black, Size: 6 Panel
SUMMARY: 3 stars from me because it's firmly average. It's fine for the price. Assembly and materials are alright but I can see some caveats depending on your circumstances. Assembly instructions do a subpar job of pointing out some details. ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS: Maybe it's because I'm autistic and/or building model kits and assembling stuff is my jam, but I honestly thought people were exaggerating when they were complaining about the instructions and I'd be able to flex my ~superior assembly skills.~ I was wrong! These instructions genuinely suck, and whoever is responsible for making them should be ashamed. The instructions do a poor job of calling out some details regarding orientation of parts, and some of the images do not actually match the physical parts. For example, it does not really outline the assembly of the end panels clearly, and I can see someone accidentally using the wrong poles. I've drawn over a photo to show what you should do to try and make it clearer. Additionally, the manual shows a flathead screw for bolting the feet into position, but the actual screw is not a flathead. It also does not point out the counterbore, so if you aren't paying attention you may put the foot pads onto the wrong side of the foot. It's also missing the fact that you need to use another one of the plastic pieces when you finish assembling a panel. ACTUAL ASSEMBLY & MATERIALS: To their credit, all of my bags were clearly labeled. The assembly process wasn't difficult. It's mostly just tedious and requires a fair amount of space. I was able to assemble it by myself without any real difficulty. However, the way it's assembled means two things. One, the fabric parts aren't removable without disassembly. So if you want to use this in an environment where they would require cleaning, I would seriously recommend looking for another option. Or, you could buy this just to use the frame pieces and then somehow buy or make your own fabric pieces designed to be removable with velcro or something. Two, because of the materials I really don't have a lot of faith in this thing surviving disassembly and reassembly. Like a lot of sorta-cheap-but-convenient furniture, it uses those spring-button connections and plastic inserts with self-tapping screws. Those things are not really meant to be disassembled and rethreaded. It also relies a lot on the tension of the poles and the fabric to keep everything rigid and squared, which I think puts a lot of pressure on the aforementioned buttons, plastic inserts, and the hollow metal rods. So I feel like that will also cause issues with disassembly and reassembly. Basically once this thing is assembled, it's not really meant to be disassembled. The best you can do is spot-clean the fabric if you need to. Speaking of the fabric, I didn't see any labels on them or anything in the manual that says what they are, but they feel like some kind of polyester. They generate static electricity pretty easily, and pet hair and debris sticks easily. So that's another downside of them not being easily removable. For the most part it does seem pretty stable. The poles seem to be pretty uniform in length so they're all making contact with my floor. Obviously this isn't structural so it shouldn't be supporting anything, but the two main feet seem to be doing fine with keeping this thing upright. CLOSING THOUGHTS: Really, it's fine for what it is, but it could be better in a lot of little ways and the substandard quality of the instructions just seems unprofessional to me, which is why I'm being so harsh with my rating. Depending on your needs and environment you may want to consider a different option. Preferably one that is made to be disassembled with better materials, and/or one with fabric pieces made to be removed easily.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2023
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Barb
Natrona Heights, US
★★★★★ 1
Not as it seems
Color: Black, Size: 6 Panel
these are awful... Each individual panel is fine, but when you put it together it can barely stand up, and the clips that hold it together keep popping off. Steer clear of this item.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2026
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Timothy Beckner
San Leandro, US
★★★★★ 5
As described
Color: White, Size: 6 Panel
Works great in my clinic
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Reviewed in the United States on May 17, 2026
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Jeff
Dallas, US
★★★★★ 5
Light weight and large privacy screen
Color: Black, Color: Black
The privacy screen is light weight and of great quality. The screen can block sight and also is easy to set up. It screen is sturdy and stable. It is a cheap solution for separating paces in rooms. The privacy screen is of black color and good good in many places. It can be folded when not used and does not take much space for storage.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2025

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