CubaPLUS Magazine

Son of painters Florencio Garrido and Carmen Álvarez-Coto (alvarezcoto. com), Samuel Garrido Álvarez-Coto, or Coto professionally, was born in Madrid and spent his childhood in the Spanish city of Cuenca, where Fernando Zóbel de Ayala had created the Museum of Abstract Art in 1966, bringing together the great painters of the time: "As a child we played football in the square with José Guerrero; Antonio Saura painted dragons on my T-shirts; Fernando Zóbel sponsored our children's musical group Los Micos; Bonifacio Alfonso ate many days at home, in short, my eye was educated from an early age, I grew up surrounded by the works of great masters," he tells CubaPLUS Guyana.

His father created the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cuenca and was its first Dean. However, he graduated in Business Studies at the Jesuits in Madrid. He worked in several companies and arrived in Cuba to learn about his origins, fell in love with the country and stayed working here, developing several businesses.

He accompanied his father after a long illness and, after his father's death, COVID-19 and confinement began. That’s when he decided to start painting on his father's unfinished oil paintings; his first pieces were unexpectedly successful and received encouragement and support from the Spanish professional art world. He sold some pieces, and changed his life in order to devote himself exclusively to painting.

On returning to Cuba in 2022, he began a series of 16 large-format oil paintings on canvas, with great effort and dedication, to establish himself as an artist and develop professionally in the country. "The future is to make a personal exhibition here with all the Caribbean work, and to continue working," he told us.

His source of inspiration is "none", he says. "The paintings come out by themselves and are a projection of my personality, of who and how I am, of my experiences; then, when they progress, I give some of them an ethereal content, but I paint directly, without a brush, with a technique I created myself, and without a previous idea of what I'm going to do, the inspiration catches me at work." The subject matter: "my own world, what others interpret." Asked to define painting in two words, he remains thoughtful: "In two words..., something strange, the projection of your soul, an adventure."
 
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