Guido Llinás (1923 – 2005) was a pioneer of abstraction in Cuba in the 1950s, but also of the visual arts of the Black Atlantic. During his stay in Paris, from 1963 to 2005, he developed his Peinture Noire. He took traditional African art as his point of departure, claiming his place within Western modernism while mobilizing the contemporary artistic practices of his time.

The major problem for research on Llinás is that his work is practically divided in two: the Cuban period, from 1946 to 1963, and the exile period, from 1963 to 2005, the year of his death in Paris. Hopefully, this catalog will help to bring together, at least virtually, an oeuvre that encompasses a wide range of languages and formal practices, from woodcuts -a kind of relief sculpture- to street art, oil painting and collage.

This new site is essentially dedicated to the investigation of a largely unknown body of work that eludes simple classification. It is divided into four main sections:

“About Guido Llinás” contains biographical data, a list of solo and group exhibitions – including those held after his death – and the public collections in which his work is represented. A bibliography completes this section.

The second part presents the aesthetic ideas around which Peinture Noire revolves. Deeply personal, it works on the ambivalence between form and sign -whether of African origin or a Western letter- while reflecting on the trace and memory, its fragmentation, even its disappearance, and its resurgence. It is diasporic art par excellence.

The online catalog raisonné, at the heart of the site, is the third section. Here we present the works gathered in the Estate Paris, which corresponds to the artist’s personal collection, as well as other works that we have been able to locate; on the basis of the painter’s archive we are aware of works whose current location we do not know. When we have a photographic reproduction of sufficient quality, we publish it here, hoping that our visitors will help us to locate the work. We have gathered a number of unsigned, undated works or works in progress in 2005, as well as works not listed by the artist; finally, a selection of wood plates next to the prints.

We call on anyone with information on the location or transaction of a work to pass this information on to us. Many thanks in advance for your collaboration!

The painter’s archive includes photographs, exhibition documents, correspondence, and notebooks and sketches. It is impossible to put all the documents online. Researchers are advised that the complete archive will soon be available at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris.