Rafael Consuegra

After relocating to the United States in the 1960s, he studied the arts in Miami Dade College with fellow artists Emilio Falero, Rafael Soriano, and received his associate degree in 1967. He then received a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Miami in 1971. He later taught as an art instructor in both Miami Dade College and Barry University.[1]

He has had multiple solo exhibitions in Miami, including shows at educational institutions such as Miami Dade College in 1970 and 2006, Barry University in 1971, and Florida International University in 1973. He also did a show in Boston's Northeastern University in 2007 titled "Freedom Birds" and has had other shows in Chicago, New York City, Athens, Georgia, and Puerto Rico. Internationally, he has done shows in Spain, France, Switzerland, Argentina, and Serbia.[1]

Consuegra has also participated in several group exhibitions, including the International Artists Salon, Grenoble, France (1977), Forum Artis I, Copenhagen, Denmark (1978), WIZO Art ‘92’, Miami (1992), "Sculpture in the Landscape," University of Miami (1995), "31 Cuban Sculptors Exhibition," Miami Dade College (2009), "Art Shanghai 2012," "Art Fest at Doral" (2012), and the Miami River Art Fair (2012).[2]

As an internationally renown Cuban artist with a career of over fifty years, Consuegra has won several awards for his art, including the Miami Art Center's Award for Sculpture in 1967, the University of Miami's Hanson Award in 1968 and Helen Banks Memorial Award in 1969, the Cintas Foundation Fellowship (New York) in both 1972 and 1973, among others. In 2012 he was designated a U.S. Ambassador to promote Belgrade as a "Capital of the Arts" in 2020.[1]

Rafael Consuegra's work can be seen in the Lowe Art Museum of the University of Miami,[3] and several noted Catholic institutions including the Agrupación Católica Universitaria of Miami, Belen Jesuit Preparatory School (for the Giants of Belen series),[4] Saint Brendan Catholic School[5] as well as many prominent Cuban art collections including the Permuy and Pinedo fine art collections.[6][7]

He has also been commissioned to produce numerous public artworks. Consuegra won a nation-wide competition to represent the United States in an arts exchange program between the sister cities, Duluth, Minnesota and Petrozavodsk, Russia. His winning sculpture, The Fishermen, is located in Petrozavodsk and symbolic in nature with the two fishermen representing the unity of the two sister cities.[8] He also produced sculptures for the Milander Recreational Complex of Hialeah that were installed in 2015.[9] On January 28, 2020 Consuegra's sculpture MINOSO was erected in Optimist Park of Miami Lakes in honor of Cuban-American baseball player Minnie Minoso (1925-2015).[10] In 2020 Consuegra was also commissioned by real estate developer and impact glass magnate Sam Moussa to create an abstract original metal sculpture for his private residence Aqua Azure.[11]

Consuegra's sculptures are known for their dynamic elements that give a sense of motion to metal, his preferred medium. At times it is an industrial, mechanized dynamism; at others it is a fluid and organic dynamism. He describes this as an ability to "breathe life into metal."[12] He also frequently uses color in his sculptures to enhance these features.

His painted work shows strong architectural influence and tends to be abstract and highly geometric. Across all mediums, Consuegra's art varies between levels of high and intermediate abstraction, occasionally with spiritual and religious subject matter, such as crucifixes and angels. Consuegra tends to initial his works with "RCC."