page_title: Kcho
section_title: 1990s
hierarchical_section_title: Kcho / Biography / 1990s
caption_attribution_description: Português: Kcho (1970) - Coluna Infinita, 2002. Acervo do Museu Brasileiro da Escultura
context_page_description: KCHO, Born Alexis Leiva Machado on the Isla de Pinos is a contemporary Cuban artist. Kcho has had art showings around the world. He first attracted international attention by winning the grand prize at South Korea's Kwangju Biennial in 1995.
context_section_description: The following year, 1991, the young artist made his first personal exhibition at the MNBA for the “Artist of the Month” space, which around that time received exhibitions from great exponents of Cuban plastic arts. That same year he was awarded the Prize granted by the National Group of Art Schools’ Teachers at the Centre of Plasticايتي Arts and Design of Havana, Cuba. 
  Also in 1991, he was part of the exhibition Proyectos recientes (Recent Projects) with the sculptors Alejandro Aguilera, Ángel Ricardo Ríos and Osvaldo Yero, among others, at the Arts Centre 23 y 12 in Havana.
  He took part in the travelling show Los hijos de Guillermo Tell (The Sons of William Tell) by curator Gerardo Mosquera, which was displayed at the Museum Alejandro Otero in Caracas, Venezuela and at the Library Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá, Colombia. It gathered together artists like José Bedía, Glexis Novoa and other important representatives of the generation of ‘80 –Kcho being the youngest artist invited to the exhibition. This show was given a warm and favourable reception by both the public and the specialized critics, including the article written by Ivonne Pine that appeared in the second edition of the ArtNexus magazine under the same title as the exhibition.
  The year 1992 was significant for the arts in Cuba since it enhanced the view of strength and creativity held by the plastic arts in this country. It was marked by two important international collective exhibitions in which Kcho had the opportunity to display his work: Vont dort aus: Kuba, organized at the Forum Ludwig in Aachen, Germany, and Arte cubano actual (Current Cuban Art) coordinated by Robert Littman for the Cultural Centre of Contemporary Art from the Cultural Foundation Televisa in Mexico City. He took part as well in important international projects such as the First Biennial Barro de América (Clay of America) by curator –and also critic- Roberto Guevara at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sofía Imber in Caracas, Venezuela, where he shared exhibition spaces with Ana Mendieta (1948 – 1985), Rimel Cardillo, Milton Becerra and other important artists in the region. Other favourable occasions to broaden the perspective of Cuban art, and Kcho's perspective in particular, were the collective exhibitions La década prodigiosa (The Prodigious Decade), which grouped a selection of Cuban plastic arts from the eighties at the Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City, and La ronda cubana (The Cuban Round) at the Van Reekum Museum in Apeldoorn, Holland.
  In 1993, Kcho fulfilled an extensive agenda of national and international commitments exhibiting his works in Cuba, the United States, Mexico, and Holland, among other countries.
  In 1994, he won a scholarship to the Ludwig Foundation for art studies in Aachen, Germany and he also got invitations for three important events in the art circuits. The first one came from curator Nelson Aguilar to participate in the 22nd Biennial in São Paulo, Brazil; the second one from Dan Cameron to be part of the collective exhibition Cocido y crudo (Cooked and Raw) organized at the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid; and the third invitation came from Yiliam Yanes Godoy, curator and director of the first and significant Biennials of Havana, to become part of the exhibition La otra orilla (The Other Shore) during the Fifth Biennial of Havana held at the colonial fortress Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro –in this last event he displayed his work La regata which from that very same year belongs to the collection of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany. La regata appears in the cover of Revolución y Cultura magazine (issue No. 5, 1994) and in Artnews, a publication specialized in arts (June 2000).
  In 1995, he participated in the 1st Kwang-Ju Biennial, Korea, where his work won the Grand Prix. That same year, in Paris, France, he was awarded the Prize for the Promotion of Arts granted by UNESCO due to the magnitude and scope of his work, for which prize an international jury must select from hundreds of applicants worldwide. The award was presented by then Dire
caption: Coluna infinita (2002). Sculpture by Kcho at the Brazilian Museum of Sculpture, São Paulo.
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