René Monzón Relova “Pozas”

The Illusion of Havana, Highly Detailed Landscape with Water & Rolling Hills

2020

René Monzón Relova “Pozas” b. 1966, Havana, Cuba René Monzón Relova, otherwise known as Pozas, was trained in Havana, Cuba as an Industrial Engineer, a profession he decided to put aside to devote himself entirely to painting. He exhibited in numerous exhibitions in Cuba where appreciation for his painting achieved international recognition. In 1995, Pozas traveled to Madrid, Spain and decided to make it his home. His first exhibitions in Cuba were done in impressionistic style but he later turned to hyperrealism/surrealism with landscape and nature as the focus. The self-taught artist’s initial impressionist work evolved focusing on the landscape as the main theme. Here he captured a photographic realism, where the light, serenity and depth of the imaginary fields envelop the viewer's gaze and invite him to abstract himself to discover how small we are. There is sometimes a lone person portrayed in his work, usually his wife or his son. Pozas places the figure in peaceful, nature filled environments, alone and in commune with nature. Sometimes the figure is not there at all, but just a feeling that they once stood in this place. Nature overflows in his work. To simply copy a landscape does not satisfy the artist. He believes in the imagined, modeled landscape of his dreams.