Johnny Somoza Hernandez

Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1973 and lives and works in Havana. Rather than an artist, Johnny Somoza is a humorist with a vocation for painting: it wasn’t just by chance that he took part in the 11th Bienal Internacional de Humorismo in Cuba, with his satirical self-representation. The same comic vein runs through his pastel and sanguine sketches on card that ironically reinterpret contemporary motifs or themes from the history of art (El Simulador is none other than a modern parody of the famous work by Jacques Louis David in which Somoza, instead of Marat, is draped supine in a sports shoe). The self-portrait of the artist becomes the mechanism used to depict the tics and manias of contemporary man through the caricatural representation of himself: in Que manera de basarte llorona he sets out a series of sixteen portraits of his own face, one after the other, with his lips puckered up in a kiss or; or in Perfil Contemporaneo and Tragando Narices he is wearing and swallowing a strange fake pointed nose that recalls the nose of the famous puppet Pinocchio.

Main solo exhibitions
2007 Tragando Narices Galería José Antonio Díaz Peláez, Academia Nacional de Bellas
Artes San Alejandro, La Habana, Cuba

1998 Aprópiate de mí, Galería La Acacia, La Habana, Cuba

Main group exhibitions
2007 Alas por la paz, Convento San Francisco de Asís, La Habana, Cuba
Bienal La llave del Cerro, Galería Teodoro Ramos Blanco, La Habana, Cuba

2001 Salón de Playa, Galería Servando Cabrera Moreno, La Habana, Cuba
Salón de la Ciudad, Centro Provincial de Arte y Diseño, La Habana, Cuba

2000 Ler Salón de Arte Erótico, Galería La Acacia, La Habana, Cuba

1999 Habana-San Francisco, Galería Villena. Biblioteca Ruben Martínez Villena, La Habana, Cuba
Bienal Internacional de Humorismo, San Antonio de los Baños, La Habana, Cuba

1998 2do. Salón Taller Internacional de estudiantes de artes plásticas. Académica 98, La Habana, Cuba
Miradas de fin de siglo, Convento San Francisco de Asís, La Habana, Cuba
Y nosotros en medio. Segundo Salón de Arte Cubano Contemporáneo, Academia San Alejandro; Galería José Antonio Díaz Pelaez, La Habana, Cuba

1997 Cualquier coincidencia es pura semejanza, Academia San Alejandro, La Habana, Cuba
Galería La Rama Dorada, Panamá Joven pintura cubana, Cámara Municipal de Borba, Portugal