There have been two crucial moments in Choco´s career. The first, when he was recognized as one of the leading figures of the ´epic-rural´ movement in painting which was so important in shaping the "70´s generation" of Cuban artists. The second moment was his exploration of ´colorgraphs´ in the 80s and early 90s, an achievement only matched in Cuba by the well-known engraver, Belkis Ayón.

For Choco, orthodox limitations are rejected. Even when he seems closer to one genre or another, similar intentions can be seen in both; whatever his chosen medium, his skills are driven by over forty years´ artistic experience.

- Choco, you come from a generation that emerged from anonymity and exclusion to enter - after the revolution of 1959 - the world of artistic creativity. How did this happen?

- In the early 60s, the government launched an initiative for people to study arts in Havana. I passed all the tests and came to the capital. It was 1962, and I was only 12 years old. I started a professional course at the Escuela Nacional de Instructores de Arte (The National School for Art Instructors). There were classes in painting, engraving and handicrafts and I had the privilege of meeting some of the biggest artists of that time - people like Alfredo Sosabravo, Antonia Eiriz, Núñez Booth, and Armando Posse, who opened my eyes to the world of creativity.

"I didn´t have the slightest idea what it meant to be a painter, let alone an artist! When I finished my studies, I couldn´t work as an art instructor as I wasn´t old enough, I was lucky, however, because I was accepted by the Escuela Nacional de Arte (National School of Arts)."

Antonia Eiriz had the biggest impact on my development at that time. After I finished at the National School of Arts, she continued giving me classes for some time. I also learned to appreciate Sosabravo who is a great teacher, and I have fond memories of Armando Posse, with whom I continued learning after I joined the Taller Experimental de Gráfica (Experimental Graphics Workshop).

- Who gave you the nickname Choco?

- When I joined ENA (the National School of Arts), some colleagues started to compare me with Chocolatico Pérez, a boxer from Santiago de Cuba. That´s how it started. When you get a nickname, at the beginning you hate it. Everyone mocks your uneasiness. All my family was calling me Chocolate, Choco - my mother, my wife, my kids; so I had to accept it one way or the other. And that was it.

- When did you learn engraving techniques?

- Engraving was one of the courses taught at ENA when I was there, around 1965. Later, in 1975, I joined Taller de Gráfica in Cathedral Square in Old Havana, full of first-rate artists. In those days it was difficult to come by all the material needed so Cuban artists had to develop alternative forms of creating, such as engraving.

"In the 80s, I had the chance to go to the US and I learned a lot about this technique. When I returned to Cuba I put all that experience to good use, particularly in lithography."

"I must say that I have never adopted engraving simply as engraving per se. I think of it as painting and that´s how it´s reflected throughout my work. At the beginning, there was a time when I developed some engravings in black and white contrasts, improvising with shades of grey. However, I must confess that I was working from the perspective of working with color. I also started working on metal and linoleum, due to lack of other materials."

"This shortage of materials lasted all through the 60s so I started developing colorgraphs. It is an innovative technique and mainly pictorial. At the beginning, when working on it, I felt like I was painting, doing wide brushstrokes and placing all the colors on the printing plate as if it was on canvas. It was a major discovery, an ideal alternative to painting."

"By the end of the 70s a more prosperous period followed, when I had the chance to start painting the Cuban landscape, the countryside and the campesinos (peasants). Then I created really colorful pieces. The figuration came out with the same strength, the same expressiveness, that I created with my engraving. Some people might see me as an engraver. In my mind, as an artist, I function as a painter. That was what I studied at ENA."

- Have you had any favorite style during your career?

- I love all styles and I favor all trends. At a certain moment in my development, new figuration had a major impact and I have carried it with me ever since. I am attracted to abstract art and no one can figure it out. My work is figurative par excellence, however; an identification with the abstract bubbles in my spirit. I have deeply admired the work of Raúl Martínez and I feel it is quite close to my artistic conception, even though we face art differently.

"I have also studied the works of Rembrandt, Velázquez, and Picasso, whom I consider the greatest of masters. I encourage the young irreverent artists and I am proud of having taught some of them in the 1980s. The challenge for me is seeing all these generations, all those periods, all those revolutions in style, and keeping myself active, trying to create work that - even from more traditional positions - approaches the heights that these young artists envisage."

- What have the essential subjects of your work been throughout all these years?

- For the first 10 years, I dealt with the campesinos (peasants in the Cuban countryside). This subject attracted most of my generation of the 70s, each artist giving it his or her own personal, individual style. Most of us were of provincial or rural origins, and as a result of the radical change after 1959, we became involved in the social process. So, our work conveyed a vision of the country from an urban perspective, or the representation of our own experience of migrating to the city.

-Have you been interested in issues of race or identity?

- When I paint, I don´t think in terms of white, mulatto, black or Chinese. The person I portray has body, limbs, soul, heart, grey matter. I refer to the biological, universal man. The person I paint has no particular skin color or profile. If you look closely, I show them with heterogeneous features, maybe African lips, Chinese eyes, pink or earth skin shades: it is a person that has its ascendancy all over the world.

"When you look at my human figures, if you look closer at their faces, you see an amalgamation of elements. From a face, let´s say, I can extract any object: vegetation, for instance, or landscape. I am comfortable, formally and conceptually, painting man as the center of everything."

"There was a time when I eliminated all reference to man, in a series during the 70s that I called "The secret life of plants." People would come up and ask "Why aren´t you including the campesinos any more?" I´d reply: "You´re right, the campesino is no longer there but his context is. Everything you could not see before because it was in the background of the campesino is now there, the sugarcane plantation, the citrus groves, everything." I tried to get a close-up of plants, to underline all that shows life in them, just to establish a parallel with the human being."

- Now that you´re involved in painting full time, has your colorgraph work diminished?

- Both colorgraph and the mystery of engraving are so deep inside me that it is practically impossible for me to separate from it. Even when most of my work is painting, I am compelled to do some engraving. My body craves for it, and so do my canvasses… Why? because with engraving I learned many things useful for painting. This feedback across both techniques makes it difficult to exclude engraving from my work. If I paint ten canvasses, it is because I have done at least five pieces in any engraving technique, even though I prefer colorgraphs. Also engraving pushes me to go on with my work, it has never disappointed me or let me down.

- Nowadays you have following people who track all your events and exhibitions. Is that a signal that your work has reached a comfortable peak of achievement?

- I am not aware of that limit and I believe I will be never aware of it. Besides, it is not up to me to define it. One´s career lasts till death. I believe in what I do, and I think that in order to achieve a certain level or maturity, you have to work everyday, day after day. I am not worried about fame, but about how to find the ideal manner to express the context where I live, its atmosphere, its spirit, its illumination, the specific way of feeling and living of its people.

- How has your work been received outside Cuba?

- I have done several exhibitions in different parts of the world, in highly developed countries. Japan is the one I find most interesting. My work has been very welcome there. The Japanese are impressed with the fact that Cuban artists have supplemented the lack of resources with an enormous intellectual eagerness and creativity.

"Some people have used the term "poor art" to describe Cuban art, but it carries a contradiction in itself. You may work with poor, ephemeral materials, but if you put your life and your talent into it, it is not poor but wealthy art. It carries the experience, the body and the soul of the artist. In a talk I had at the Kyoto University, the professors confessed that, with the excessive use of material and technological resources, some of the creations of the young local artists appeared cold, ethereal and lacking sense."

- What´s your opinion about the Cuban critics and their comments on the generation of the 70s?

- I hardly ever pay attention to the critics. They´re never aware of what is going on in the inner world of an artist. The artist thinks of something and the critic adorns the whole thing because he has the gift to speak. However, both the artist and the critic are on opposite tracks of thought most of the time.

"Our creative process back in the 70s when we started was completely in tune with the revolutionary transformation happening in the country. The interesting thing is that this much-criticized generation is still around, doing a lot of deeply important things in and out of the country. When a generation is aware of what it does and continues to create and participate in the cultural process of its time, it is difficult for it to lose its way or go backwards."

- Some of your contemporaries and some that came after your time, mainly engravers, show a direct influence of your method and artistic style. What´s your view on that?

- I am actually quite happy that people follow the things I do. It means they have value. What I have achieved so far and what people now follow is the result of experimenting and studying. For example, for those planes of black in my colorgraphic work, quite difficult to make, I started experimenting in different fabrics and also jute. At the beginning, it did not work out because of the texture and the thread combination, and the graying effects on cardboard. Then I tried sandpaper and carborundum, but it did not work either, and they were expensive. In the end, I tried with sand.

"You can imagine all the hard work, as I had to sift through a massive amount of sand from the sea and then let it dry under the sun so it would not affect the pieces. It was a long process but it worked out cheaper. I managed to achieve clean and tranquil shades of black and I was able to combine it with interesting textures, conceived with fine wooden plates."

* Editor´s Note: Choco currently has a permanent exhibit entitled "Colors and Rhythms of Cuba" at the Chambers Gallery of London, Britain until the end of November)