Arte por Excelencias mourns the passing of Cuban intellectual Rufo Caballero (Cardenas 1966-Jan. 5, 2011), one of the contributing writers linked to our magazine from its foundation. In his column “All by Oneself” he displayed his erudition and his gift for controversy in responding to the processes of art.
The many essays he left either unpublished or unfinished, his narration and his audiovisual work –he used to rejoice particularly in the latter- are joined by a large and contributing bevy of essays on cinema, music and the fine arts put out in the press and in such books as The Quetzal Chirping, A Lonely Man and a Dark Street, Genre Role in Film Noir, Latin America Cinema: A Runaway Fish, Holy Water: Art Critic 1987-2007, and many others.
A PhD in Art and permanent professor with the School of Art and Letters at the University of Havana, his work was widely recognized with prizes such as the Lya Kostakowsky Hispanic American Essay, the National Prize on Film Review Essay and the Distinction on National Culture awarded to him back in 2003.
During the presentation of issues four and five of the Arte por Excelencias magazine (May 30, 2010), Rufo wrapped up his keynote speech with remarks we’d like to retake now for it clearly defines his character as a man of thoughts: “culture, visual or not, is a everyday thing. Culture is needed to breathe, to walk, to make love, to root for a baseball team, for a country; to find our place in the world without the old arrogance of the conceited region.”
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