This painting is a reimagining of one of Victor Huerta Batista - Autorretrato en el zapato milagroso classic masterworks from the early 2000s, a work that was quickly acquired by a fortunate collector. The present piece is a spectacular achievement, with a level of detail and refinement that, in our view, surpasses the original painting that inspired it. Huerta is both a technical genius and a consummate master of his craft—an increasingly rare convergence among contemporary artists.
From the artist:
“Once, I saw a sentence written on a ticket booth: ‘Every man, at least once in his life, has to risk everything to succeed or choose to sit back and watch how other people’s success happens.’ That idea has inspired much of my work. With the same confidence a child has at birth—unconcerned with destiny—life unfolds. What matters most is the journey: to learn, to grow, to create, and to leave the world better than you found it, without pretending to be better than anyone else, while always striving to be better than you were yesterday.”
Description:
30 x 40 inches (75 x 100 cm)
2025
Oil on canvas
Permanent Collections:
University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona
Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona
Extremadura Museum of Art, Extremadura, Spain
Writing in Tucson Weekly, critic Margaret Regan described Huerta’s imagery as wild, imaginative, and resistant to single interpretation. His paintings are populated by hybrid creatures, collapsing figures, symbolic machines, and theatrical scenes that feel erotic, humorous, unsettling, and poetic all at once. Works such as Caerse de Habana (2002) and Feliz Cumpleaños (2003) demonstrate his ability to balance visual excess with precise control.
Huerta practices what Cubans call lo real maravilloso (“the marvelous real”), a counterpart to Latin American magical realism. He places recognizable figures, landscapes, and architecture into irrational or impossible spaces, playing with shifts in scale and perspective to create dreamlike narratives.
His surfaces are richly layered, featuring subtle glazes, controlled drips, and a restrained Old World palette of browns, ambers, golds, and muted blues. Cuban landscapes often emerge as atmospheric backdrops—soft palm trees, glowing rooftops, shimmering coastal waters, and chalky sunset skies.
Huerta’s influences range from Leonardo da Vinci’s mechanical drawings to the fantastical visions of Hieronymus Bosch and the unrestrained imagination of Francisco Goya. These connections were underscored when his work was exhibited alongside Goya’s Los Disparates at the University of Arizona Museum of Art. As curator Lisa Fischman observed, “His imagination is unloosed. He’s an artist willing to see where that goes—a precedent Goya himself set.”
Correspondence:
In Relation to Goya: Paintings by Victor Huerta Batista
Goya’s Mastery in Prints: Los Disparates
University of Arizona Museum of Art, through September 30, 2007
For more information, call (323) 744-7550 or visit the gallery’s Artnet page:
http://www.artnet.com/artists/victor-huerta-batista/