Artwork Details
Artist: Baruj Salinas
Title: Astir
Date: 2016
Medium: Watercolor, gouache, pastel, charcoal, and graphite on canvas
Dimensions: 34 x 40 inches
Category: Contemporary Cuban abstract painting / Contemporary Non-representational abstraction
Style: Contemporary abstraction / Abstract Expressionism
Condition: Excellent; professionally framed
Authentication: Fully guaranteed by MLA Gallery
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Astir (2016) is a sophisticated large-scale late-career painting by Baruj Salinas that demonstrates the intrinsic refinement, confidence, and conceptual clarity of the artist’s mature abstraction during the final decade of his life. Executed with remarkable restraint and atmospheric complexity, the work stands as a compelling example of Salinas’ enduring ability to push contemporary abstraction beyond formal gesture into realms of sensation, movement, and psychological resonance.
Created during a fertile and historically significant late period in the artist’s career — coinciding with Salinas’ internationally recognized involvement in The Torah Project, which would ultimately culminate in the artist entering the permanent collection of The Vatican in 2017 — Astir reflects the culmination of more than six decades devoted to the evolution of abstract painting. By this stage of his career, Salinas had fully distilled his visual language into an unmistakably singular and deeply meditative form of abstraction that balanced intellectual rigor with intuitive revelation.
As its title suggests, Astir is not concerned with literal representation, but with the evocation of movement, atmosphere, and emotional energy itself. The non-objective composition conveys sensations akin to shifting sea currents, or internal states of excitation and awakening — not through direct imagery, but through nuanced tonal relationships, gestural movement, and layered spatial tension. Broad passages of softened greys, selective whites, and atmospheric tonalities subtly reference the ethereal backgrounds associated with Salinas’ celebrated Barcelona period and landmark Language of the Clouds works, while the painting’s overall energy feels unmistakably contemporary, dynamic, and fully mature.
Executed in watercolor, gouache, pastel, charcoal, and graphite on canvas, Astir reveals the artist’s distinctive material sensitivity and command of surface. Gestural forms emerge and dissolve across the expansive composition with rhythmic fluidity, creating a visual field that feels simultaneously calm and unsettled, suspended between stillness and motion. The work exemplifies Salinas’ unique ability to sustain visual intensity through restraint, allowing abstraction itself to become the carrier of experience rather than illustration. Its sophistication is further heightened by the subtle tonal descent of the expansive, vacuous background — transitioning from light, atmospheric grey tones in the upper register to a deeper, space-like dark abyss below — creating a quiet but powerful vertical gradient that amplifies the work’s sense of depth, suspension, and infinite spatial drift.
In many ways, Astir also illuminates why Baruj Salinas became such an influential artistic figure beyond his own studio practice. Internationally recognized as a pioneer of contemporary abstraction and widely regarded as one of the leading Cuban contemporary masters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Salinas helped extend the philosophical and visual legacy of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism into a distinctly transcultural and contemporary context. His influence extended over generations of artists not only through his exhibitions and institutional presence, but through his decades as a professor of fine art, mentor, and founder of important artistic collectives and cultural initiatives.
Rather than merely imitating the historic language of midcentury Abstract Expressionism, Salinas transformed it. He introduced greater meditative subtlety, philosophical depth, diasporic consciousness, and atmospheric ambiguity into the tradition and anchored the concept of both capturing and bridging psychological internal states with expansive universal and metaphysical concepts beyond the seen world. Astir stands as a particularly refined example of this approach: a work that feels simultaneously rooted in the legacy of postwar abstraction as well as fresh and entirely independent from it.
Large-scale late-career verified Salinas paintings of this caliber remain increasingly scarce as institutional recognition, scholarly reassessment, and collector demand continue to expand following the artist’s passing in 2024. In its scale, sophistication, and historical placement within the artist’s mature oeuvre, Astir represents an important museum-quality example of contemporary Cuban and Latin American abstraction at the height of Salinas’ late-career mastery.
MLA Gallery proudly guarantees the authenticity and provenance of this work in writing through its longstanding relationship with the Baruj Salinas Legacy Estate (BSLE).
Historical & Artistic Significance
● Sophisticated large-scale late-career work by Baruj Salinas
● Demonstrates the artist’s highly refined mature abstract style
● Explores movement, atmosphere, and emotional energy through pure abstraction
● Subtly references Salinas’ celebrated Barcelona-period aesthetics while remaining distinctly contemporary
● Reflects the artist’s internationally recognized contribution to postwar and contemporary abstraction
● Created during the period surrounding Salinas’ historic Torah Project commission and Vatican acquisition
● Museum-quality contemporary Cuban abstraction with strong institutional and collector relevance
Baruj Salinas is the most significant, and well established contemporary artist this gallery represents. He has work in the permanent collections of over 35 museums, and has had over 150 solo shows worldwide, and a number of museum shows. Sadly, this Cuban Master passed on in August of 2024.
This is an excellent example of original Salias works on canvas. The work is both stunning and profound. This work is watercolor, gouache, pastel, charcoal and graphite on canvas. This painting is 34" x 40" and was done in 2016. It is nicely framed. This painting has very thick paint, and must be shipped flat. Will be shipped free of cost, within the US. Or for a flat fee of $300 worldwide, via express shipping.
For more info call us at (323) 792-3779, or to see a greater selection of the gallery work, please visit our Artnet site at:Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Arte del Siglo XX, Casa de la Asegurada, Alicante, Spain.
Bacardi Collection, Miami, Fl
Beit Uri Museum, Israel.
Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain.
Cabinet des Estampes, Geneva, Switzerland.
Cuban Museum of Art, Miami, Florida.
Fundacion Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain.
Fundación Maria Zambrano, Velez-Malaga, Spain.
Fundacion Miguel Aleman, Mexico City
Institute of International Education, New York, NY.
Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City
Musee Villa du Parc, Annemasse, France
John Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida.
Lowe Art Museum (Cuban Collection) Coral Gables, Fl.
McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas.
Museo Alvar Carrillo Gil, Mexico City
Ayuntamiento de Soria, Spain
Museo Arte Contemporaneo LatinoAmericano (MACLA), La Plata, Argentina.
Museo Cuevas, Mexico City
Museo de Arte Moderno, Ibiza, Spain.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City
Museo de Villafames, Villafames, Spain.
Museo del Barrio, New York, NY
Museo Rayo, Roldanillo, Colombia.
Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City
Museo Nacional D'Árt de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain.
Museum of Art, Budapest, Hungary.
Museum of the Americas (OAS), Washington, DC.
Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, Michigan.
Pemex Collection, Mexico City
Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix, Arizona.
Public Library, City of Miami, Miami, Florida.
San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas.
University of Ohio Museum of Art, Miami, Ohio.
Villa de Montecatini Collection, Italy
Museo Maria Zambrano, Velez-Malaga, Spain




