Hortensia de los Santos
Author, Researcher, Theorist
DR.JULIO DE LOS SANTOS
I present here the work of an amateur, another author whose work has remained unpublished for many years. Julio de los Santos, Medical doctor, English Language professor, photographer, botanist, polyglot (he spoke English, Spanish, French, German and some Russian and Italian), loving father, grandfather and husband; he pondered all matters scientific and literary. He lacked the ability to paint, nevertheless he loved this artistic expression and his photographic art gave joy to many a guest to his famous soirees. My father wrote a book some forty years ago about the interpretation of art by Jose Marti, a poet and revolutionary of the nineteenth century Cuba. His study of Jose Marti's literary work and his appreciation of all painters of renown, and of those not very known, led to the present work.
Like jewels captured by pirates and hidden in forgotten caves, the criticisms of those paintings are lost among the many essays Marti wrote during his short life. It took many months, perhaps years for my father to complete his research because at that time, the magnificent resources the Internet offers did not exist. In his essays, Marti refers to paintings that had to be found in books and other publications; many of those, thanks to Cuba's political regime and conditions, only available through influential or foreign friends. Finally, by the end of 1982, Dr. de los Santos finished his book. Again, Cuba's political situation prevented it from being published. Now, we can offer it to the public in this website, hosted by the author's daughter with love and veneration. May his work finally see the light.
Who was this man, this Jose Marti whose work my father so thoroughly studied? His full name was José Julián Martí Pérez and he was born on January 28, 1853. He died just 42 years after, on May 19, 1895, killed by a Spanish soldier bullet at the beginning of the Cuban Independence War. He is a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children's magazine. He wrote for many Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded several newspapers himself. Jose Marti was too, as this work shows, an art critic. He traveled extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, visiting museums and enjoying the various paintings he there found.