Skip to main content

Carlos Alfonzo Art

Cuban, 1950-1991
In July of 1980, Carlos Alfonzo left Cuba in exile through the port of Mariel and arrived in Miami. At an early stage of his youth on the island, Alfonzo’s creative talent became apparent, an endowment he began to cultivate through formal artistic studies at the prestigious San Alejandro Academy and the University of Havana from 1969 to 1977. Carlos Alfonzo became disenchanted with the regime as a young man living and working within the Cuban system, cautiously navigating the emotional and artistic repressions of post-revolutionary life. Carlos Alfonzo decided to leave Cuba just eight months before the pivotal Volumen 1 (Volume 1) exhibition that heralded a new international direction in contemporary Cuban Art and where Alfonzo was slated to exhibit among those who would later become known as the “1980s generation.” With hopes of finally living an open life as an individual and artist, he endured a traumatic crossing via the Mariel boatlift to settle in Miami. Within the decade following his exile, the young artist and political refugee were awarded a Visual Artist Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington D.C., a Cintas fellowship in the Visual Arts, and his work was exhibited in solo and group shows on a national and international scale including the 1991 Whitney Biennial, the exhibition entitled Hispanic Art in the United States which traveled to seven prominent American institutions, and the 41st Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting at Corcoran Gallery. Today, his work forms part of the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Gallery and Sculpture Garden, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, and numerous institutions of worldwide prominence. Alfonzo’s style developed significantly, and his career as an artist matured during a period in which neo-expressionist figurative Art came to renewed global attention. As he was exposed to great works of modernist and contemporary Art in America, he internalized various styles – cubist, surrealist, expressionistic, and abstract expressionist – and adapted them to his free-flowing expression resulting in a style discernibly his own. A magical body of work emanated, combining intense autobiographical experience with cross-cultural mythologies in an oeuvre laden with penetrative, intimate messaging that recounts the soul and struggle of the artist’s life experience through a stark, resonant system of forms. Alfonzo employs the spiritual iconography of African deities, Catholicism, and the ritualistic emblems of Santería in heads, disembodied facial features, daggers, and arrows to hauntingly convey eternal paradoxes of the human condition and the unconscious, an impression recognized by the leading art critics of the era. Carlos Alfonzo emerged not simply as a Latin American artist but as a celebrated artist of the Americas.
to
1
2
Overall Width
to
Overall Height
to
3
2
1
2
1
1
1
3
10,138
2,779
1,375
1,369
3
Artist: Carlos Alfonzo
Untitled 1988 Artist Proof
By Carlos Alfonzo
Located in Miami, FL
Alfonzo's style developed significantly, and his career as an artist matured during a period in which neo-expressionist figurative art came to renewed global attention. As he was exp...
Category

1980s Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Linocut

Untitled
By Carlos Alfonzo
Located in New York, NY
Untitled (1994) by artist Carlos Alfonzo, featured in "The Queer Show, Part I" at Hal Bromm Gallery. The work is on a paper scroll and is signed by the artist in the bottom left corn...
Category

1990s Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Ink

Green Ceramic Woman on a Plate, colorful, abstract
By Carlos Alfonzo
Located in New York, NY
A plate with a green and yellow ceramic woman's body from waiter up attached on it. Signed and dated verso. Born in Havana in 1950, Alfonzo w...
Category

1980s Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Ceramic

Related Items
Running Hares, Limited edition print, Landscape, Nature, Bunny, Rabbit
By Rob Barnes
Located in Deddington, GB
In early February, running hares can be seen locally as they compete for females. They are huge and fast as they run across the fields. they form a frequent entertainment and have in...
Category

2010s Contemporary Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Linocut

Yin. "Sea Seeds" series.
Located in Zofingen, AG
Yin — from the Seeds of the Sea series — embodies the feminine essence in its purest form: receptive, fluid, and quietly powerful. Smooth, white scales flow over a luminous crimson c...
Category

2010s Abstract Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Porcelain, Textile, Acrylic

Yin. "Sea Seeds" series.
Yin. "Sea Seeds" series.
$3,000
H 15.75 in W 19.69 in D 7.09 in
2006.23 - XXI century, Black and white abstraction
By Łukasz Blikle
Located in Warsaw, PL
Work on paper, by Łukasz Blikle
Category

2010s Other Art Style Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Paper, Ink

Poetic Coastal Abstract Wall Waves Seascape Sculpture with Foam and Enamel
By Vera Vizzi
Located in FISTERRA, ES
L’Ordine delle Onde (The Order of the Waves) is a textural sculpture by Vera Vizzi, part of her ongoing exploration of contemporary coastal art. Crafted from foam clay, acrylic, plas...
Category

2010s Contemporary Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Enamel

American Surrealist pipes and playing cards spirit of Magritte abstract Montage
By Charles Green Shaw
Located in Norwich, GB
I love this extraordinary American surrealist piece - a collage/montage, an assembly of objects in a velvet-clad box/frame - for a number of reasons reasons. I love the fact that it depicts pipes, among the most iconic images of the surrealist movement, rooted in Magritte’s famous 1929 painting which depicts a pipe accompanied by the caption “Ceci n'est pas une pipe” (This is not a pipe). Marcel Duchamp loved using pipes...
Category

1930s Surrealist Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Clay, Glass, Paper, Found Objects, Wood

Love Forever
By Yayoi Kusama
Located in New York, NY
Yayoi Kusama Love Forever, 2016 Ceramic (Porcelain) Dish and Cover Stamped Yayoi Kusama on bottom 4 1/2 × 4 1/2 × 1 1/2 inches Unframed Limited edition (exact number created is unkno...
Category

2010s Pop Art Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Ceramic, Porcelain, Screen

Love Forever
Love Forever
$880
H 4.5 in W 4.5 in D 1.5 in
Foam Clay Draped Relief Sculptural Painting in Deep Blue Tones on Fir Wood
By Vera Vizzi
Located in FISTERRA, ES
Foam clay relief in deep blue tones on fir wood that sculpts a draped form, suggesting an enclosed oceanic presence at the edge of the field. This sculptural painting is executed in ...
Category

2010s Pop Art Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Enamel

Keeping the Culture, mixed media signed/N print by top African American artist
By Kerry James Marshall
Located in New York, NY
Kerry James Marshall Keeping the Culture, 2011 Silkscreen and linocut in colors with full margins and deckled edges on Arches paper with full margins and deckled edges 20-1/4 x 30-1/4 inches Hand signed, titled and numbered 79/100 by Kerry James Marshall in graphite pencil on the front Published by Africa House International, Chicago Unframed In September, 2025, "Kerry James Marshall: The Histories" opened at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. This major exhibition was the largest presentation of Marshall's work in the United Kingdom and Europe, and featured more than 70 works by the the artist, including a large number of paintings and a selection of prints, drawings and sculptures. Highlights of the show include a new series of paintings that explore the transatlantic slave trade, along with Knowledge and Wonder, a mural commissioned in 1995 by the Chicago Public Library that is the largest painting Marshall has produced. The exhibition at the Royal Academy will then travel to the Kunsthaus Zurich and the Musee d'Art Modern in Paris. Kerry James Marshall's 2011 "Keeping the Culture" is based upon the artist's eponymous painting done the year earlier, which is featured in the Royal Academy Exhibition. In 2013, an original painting, upon which this work is based, sold at Christie's auction. Below is the Christie's Lot Essay for that painting: ..." Set in a revolutionary apartment in the cosmos, Kerry James Marshall's Keeping the Culture optimistically anticipates a future that pays homage to the past. Ushering in a new stage of the artist's output, Keeping the Culture shifts focus from the failed utopia of urban renewal and the commemoration of civil rights era heroes in favor of a more technically refined meditation on the preservation of the traditional and spiritual values that shaped a culture. Placed in an ultramodern environment, two siblings marvel at a projection of the earth--in which Marshall has aptly positioned the African continent toward the viewer-while their affectionate parents dance in the foreground. Overlooking the milky way, Marshall's space-age flat is decorated with earthly relics-wooden tribal sculptures...
Category

2010s Contemporary Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Mixed Media, Pencil, Linocut, Screen

Mixed-Media Wall Sculpture foam clay, acrylic & enamel on wood. "In a While"
By Vera Vizzi
Located in FISTERRA, ES
IN A WHILE (2025) is a small-scale, wall-mounted mixed-media sculpture by Vera Vizzi that transforms a familiar domestic object into a sculptural encounter. Hand-modeled in foam clay and applied onto a compact wooden block (25 x 9 x 10 cm), the work is finished with layered acrylic paint and enamel marker decoration along the extruded “tube” form. The piece foregrounds tactile surface, color contrast (white base with red/yellow graphic motifs) and a vertical, relief-like silhouette that reads equally as objet d’art or a focused accent on a gallery wall. Conceptually the work frames an everyday action — squeezing a tube — as a compressed temporal event: small gestures that compress time and meaning. Keywords for search and contextualisation: mixed media on wood, foam clay sculpture, enamel and acrylic, wall sculpture, small contemporary sculpture...
Category

2010s Pop Art Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Enamel

Purple Composition, Abstract Geometric Linocut by Larry Zox
By Larry Zox
Located in Long Island City, NY
Larry Zox, American (1937 - 2006) - Purple Composition, Year: 1971, Medium: Linocut, signed and numbered in pencil, Edition: 6/50, Size: 22 x 30 in. (55.88 x 76.2 cm), Framed Siz...
Category

1970s Abstract Geometric Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Linocut

PAX (MOUNTAIN TOP) - Geometric Abstract Sculpture w/ Reclaimed Building Material
Located in Signal Mountain, TN
Coming Soon
Category

2010s Contemporary Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Marble

Abstract Landscape India Rajasthan Light Natural Mustard Earth Blue Yellow
By Mukesh Sharma
Located in Norfolk, GB
There is a natural and raw understanding in Mukesh Sharma’s prints that depict, and are influenced by, the Rajastani communities of his home town in rura...
Category

1990s Abstract Carlos Alfonzo Art

Materials

Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Linocut

Carlos Alfonzo art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Carlos Alfonzo art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Carlos Alfonzo in linocut and more. Not every interior allows for large Carlos Alfonzo art, so small editions measuring 15 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Agustín Fernández, Wifredo Lam, and Carmen Herrera. Carlos Alfonzo art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $3,500 and tops out at $3,500, while the average work can sell for $3,500.

Artists Similar to Carlos Alfonzo

Still Thinking About These?

All Recently Viewed