NOVANEWS
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Statue in Havana, Cuba at the International Book Fair. | Photo: Reuters
A statue to honor Colombian writer and Literature Nobel prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez will be unveiled in Havana, Cuba on Thursday to remember his literary work and legacy for Latin American writers.
RELATED: How Fidel and Gabriel Garcia Marquez Changed Cinema Forever
Cuban artist Jose Villa Soberon was commissioned to make the sculpture to be placed in the Museum of the Caribbean in Barranquilla. The current Colombian ambassador to Cuba, Gustavo Bell, insisted on also installing a copy in Havana, a city visited many times by the author.
Villa Soberon said that he only accepts work that he connects with, and this one caught his attention. The artist is also working on a sculpture of Cuban ballet dancer Alicia Alonso.
Some of Villa Soberon’s most famous works include a monument to John Lennon in a park in Havana, a sculpture of Ernest Hemingway located in the restaurant El Floridita in Havana and a Benny More figure on Paseo del Prado in Cienfuegos.
The garden of the Art and Literature Institute of Havana in the historical center of the city will hold the sculpture, which is inspired by the moment when the writer attended the Nobel Literature prize ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden in 1982.
RELATED: Cuban Film Festival to Open, Will Pay Tribute to Fidel
The statue of Garcia Marquez is wearing a liquiliqui, a traditional suit from South America, in the region between Venezuela and Colombia, and holding books and a yellow flower.
According to Villa Soberon, the 26th International Book Fair, celebrated in the Cuban capital from Feb. 9 until Feb. 19, provides the appropriate framework to inaugurate the piece.
He says it pays homage to Garcia Marquez on the 90th anniversary of his birth and 50 years after the publication of his masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
