Cuban Fine Artist Granted Permanent Residence in U.S. by U.S. State Department and Department of Justice.

Yuri Martinez is the first Cuban artist to be granted a professional status 0-1 visa, allowing him to make his home in Southern California. In 2000 Cuban authorities signed off on his exit papers. Martinez remains the only Cuban artist to be granted this permission.

LOS ANGELES, CA (PRWEB) May 27, 2003 - Cuban fine artist and émigré Yuri Martinez is living his American dream. From the time he was a child his dreams were populated with the desire to leave his native Havana and build a life in the United States. But never in his wildest imagination did he believe his dream might actually come true. I never thought it would happen. I dreamed about living here my whole life. I honestly dont know why Im the one. Its a miracle!"

Born into a family of artists - his father is a renowned illustrator and designer, his uncles were well-known sculptors, and his grandfather was a painter of note - Martinez and his older brother would spend countless hours in their familys small apartment seeing who could out-draw the other. Trained at the prestigious Havana School of the Arts he earned a degree, and later earned a living as an art professor. Still he dreamed of a day when he might live a short ninety miles away, in the United States, where he could pursue both personal and artistic freedom.

Things began to change in 1998 when Martin Wolper of the the Papillon Gallery arranged for Martinezs first successful solo exhibition in Los Angeles, Dream of the Distant." Other exhibitions followed setting the wheels in motion for a most unlikely series of events. In 2000, in the shadow of the Elian Gonzalez affair, the U.S. State Department and Department of Justice granted Martinez a professional trades 0-1 visa -- a status never before granted to an artist. Remarkably Castros repressive government granted him permission to leave with his wife and young son. To this day they are the only Cubans to have been granted such status. For Martinez it was a culmination of a lifelong dream to pursue his artistic career outside of Cuba.

Martinezs paintings recall Chagalls blend of cubism and surrealism; and Boteros use of expressive faces and satirical social commentary. Still his style is imbued with a distinctly Cuban touch. His paintings reveal imaginary worlds where colors dance and mere humans pulsate with mythical magic. His fantastic canvases portray our human frailties with passion and lend even those who seem hopeless an air of dignity.

My subjects are seeking escape from a deplorable system, whether that escape is through daydreams, memories, music or a lover," says Martinez. I create a surreal magical realism where dreams, fantasies, and frustration play together like leading actors on a stage."

Since his arrival, Martinez has staged four solo exhibitions and has participated in several group shows in Los Angeles and New York. His work hangs in private collections around the world including Germany, Spain, Puerto Rico, Chile, Mexico, and Panama; and domestically in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Now a permanent resident of Studio City, CA the Martinez home is filled with the scent of Cuban coffee and Yuris paintings on the walls. His wife Marta works for a Cuban-American homeopath, his fully bilingual son Marcel is a first-grader at the neighborhood elementary school, and American-born daughter Melanie coos and watches her father paint. Of course Martinezs American dream does come with struggles, like adjusting to a capitalist economy and the nuances of living in another culture, not to mention living so far from family and friends. Still, Yuri Martinez is grateful to be living where he can paint a future of possibilities for himself and his family, which might be the most surreal notion hes ever imagined. (View work at www.yurigallery.com)