page_title: José Bernal
section_title: Life in Cuba
hierarchical_section_title: José Bernal / Biography / Life in Cuba
caption_attribution_description: English: The photograph of this painting by J. Bernal, my father, was taken by me. It is part of my archived documents. It also appears in his Artist Works Catalogue of Artnet I, Lucrecia Bernal Schneider, took the photograph of this painting by José Bernal -my father- at his art studio a few years ago to compile an archive of his artworks. This painting is in Bernal's personal collection and it may also be seen in his Artnet Artist Works Catalogue (AWC): http://artnet.com/awc/josebernal.html where I sent it to Artnet's AWC Account Executive to upload on to his catalogue.
context_page_description: José Antonio Severino Bernal Muñoz was a Cuban-American artist, born in Santa Clara, Cuba, in the former province of Las Villas and became a naturalized U.S.A. citizen in 1980.
  Bernal's aesthetics stemmed from his Cuban birth and the experience of exile and renewal. His art has been described as modernist, abstract, and expressionist. The term postmodernist also may be applied to Bernal's diverse and complex body of work, specifically as he rejected the notion of the new in art, a characteristic imbued in postmodern theory.
context_section_description: When Bernal was a child, he was privately tutored in art and music.  He was graduated from Normal Teachers College in 1945 and began teaching at a series of public and private schools in the province of Las Villas. Simultaneously, he enrolled in the Escuela de Artes Plásticas Leopoldo Romañach where he earned his MFA. His musical and visual creations were performed and exhibited in Santa Clara and Havana.
  In 1961, "... during the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Bernal was among the throngs of Cubans arrested for unpatriotic behavior and confined for eleven days in the gymnasium of the Marta Abreu University in Santa Clara.  Bernal's offense was refusal to work in the fields cutting sugar cane.  After his release, the threat of execution haunted [him] and his wife, and they cautiously initiated plans to leave the country with their three young children. It took more than a year to obtain visas ..." and with the help of the Methodist Church, the Bernals were able to board a Pan Am flight for the United States of America in June 1962.
caption: Campfire in the Woods, Bernal, 1950
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