Miguel Ángel Botalín Pampín: An Artist Reveals another City
The outstanding Santiago-born Miguel Ángel Botalín Pampín was born on March 8, 1932 and passed away at the age of 81. He was the eighth son of Miguel Ángel Bottalini Rius and Josefa Adelaida Pampín Fornet. This artist studied at José Joaquín Tejada Fine Arts School and graduated in late 1950s. He also got his degree in Legal Sciences at the Havana University.
Click on Santiago de Cuba: A City of 500 Years
As a child he used to paint the fascinating Santiago de Cuba scenery he could see from his window at the popular El Tivolí neighborhood. Botalín Pampín said once that “the Callejón de Manga Chupa is what I’ve painted the most, where I grew a teenager, as well as the gorgeous San Jerónimo corridors”.
As years went by, the young man became a student leader and occupied different positions, such as program director with the Ministry of Culture, with Editorial Arte y Literatura, Revolución y Cultura magazine and he was a founding member of Cuba’s Writers and Artists (UNEAC is the Spanish acronym). He also worked as a UN consultant for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) in Nicaragua.
All of these responsibilities kept him away from the easel for over thirty years, but he went back to his origins and carried out exhibits where the most Caribbean city, Santiago de Cuba, played the leading role.
During the 1950 decade, Botalín Pampín participated in the creation of the Galería Group, which headed by maestro Antonio Ferrer Cabello and was very important for Santiago’s cultural life. He expressed that “the definitive relevance of Galería is the fact that its members worked hard to establish the artistic modernity in Santiago de Cuba, where the 19th century had merged with the 20th in terms of cultural matters”.
The artist participated in the World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Moscow in 1957.
“Santiago’s light is transparent and vibrant. There are times when you cannot tell the difference between horizon and sky because there is so much light that sometimes there is no difference. I’ve painted that” the remarkable artists pointed out.
Botalín Pampín has held over one hundred and fifty shows in Cuba, Latin America and the Caribbean, United States and Europe, and his works are included in several private collections in Germany, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Spain, France, Guadalupe, Holland, England, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Martinique, Mexico, Russia, Switzerland, Uruguay, Venezuela…
Poet Waldo Leyva commented “Miguel Ángel Botalín (…) the city is both dream and agony for him (…) I saw the malleable substance of light that reveals another city temperature, which has been hidden from different palettes” and novelist José Soler Puig wrote “when I look at Botalín’s painting I feel nostalgic about Santiago and I badly wish to walk those streets and knock on the doors”.
Among the main recognitions Botalín was given, we should mention: Raúl Gómez García Medal for the 20th Anniversary of the Assault to the Moncada Barracks and Clandestine Struggle, José María Heredia Recognition Plaque and the Honorable Award of Cuba Disco International Festival (FIC) in 2011. In the international arena, he got the medal for the 1,300th anniversary of the Foundation of the Bulgarian State.
