Artist: Cesar Santos

Following his recent show with the gallery in New York, Robilant+Voena presents an exhibition of paintings by Cuban-American artist Cesar Santos. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the UK, offering an encounter with his captivating and intuitive approach to abstraction. The exhibition features over twenty of the artist’s signature paintings that show his mastery of form, harmony and colour. A new catalogue is being published to mark the exhibition, with an essay by art historian Professor Jason Rosenfeld.

In the exhibition, Santos presents ambitious oil paintings, stretching over 2m in height, alongside delicate ink and charcoal drawings, showing the impressive range of his output. Each work is characterised by forms that are tantalisingly close to figuration, yet which, through the artist’s technical mastery and expressive vision, are impossible to fathom as logical elements of reality. The title Manuscripts refers to the improvisation that begins each painting, emphasising the raw and organic nature of Santos’ practice. Also, the term Manuscripts signals that each artwork can be ‘read’ and ‘interpreted’ by viewers to ascertain its significance – a significance that might be fresh and different for each person. Every work demonstrates the artist’s organic approach to painting, creating discrete ecosystems which emerge as he paints, often building layers over several days. These paintings offer a distillation of Santos’ innate and spontaneous relationship with the world.

The artist explains:

"I see the world as a flow of surprising things rather than a place of known fixed things. I recognize the environment always as new, always as intricate to navigate.

In my world of adaptation, attention is the means for connection. I have adapted my vision to see everything universal by paying attention to relationships between all. I look for patterns that exist within the aesthetics of objects and their infinite possibilities of meaning within their surroundings.
I paint the "idea" of appearance, rather than the appearance of something.

By adapting the conditions of my elements into an internal way of seeing, I get to compose infinite visual harmonies of memories.

I am trying to capture the movement of anything in space. I paint abstractly, to see more clearly the invisible motor that pushes all. Through layers of color, I consolidate the vibrations of waves and turn them into masses; in the division of these masses is where the action is.

I paint a world infused with the dynamics of consciousness. Every composition is an attempt to capture the forces that move matter.

When I see nature, I keep going past the subject and remain with the object, purely enjoying its design and the curvature of light and shadow."

The artworks in the exhibition also mark a new direction for the artist that he has developed in the past year: the engagement with the formal qualities of impasto. Works such as Phantoms and And the Winner Is (both 2024) show the visceral handling of paint, with Santos applying paint directly from the tube onto the canvas. The artist’s immersion in Italian and wider European Old Master painting, since moving to live in Florence, Italy, in 2021, has sparked these investigations, while also providing models for the principles of harmonious composition and colour that characterise the paintings. He explains, ‘From the Old Masters I learned to love the materials involved as well as the process of painting.’ While undeniably contemporary, many of Santos’ works, such as Road Trip (2023) and At Three O’Clock (2024), evoke the grandeur of Renaissance masters such as Michelangelo and Raphael, while the elongated forms in works such as Join In (2024) are reminiscent of Florentine mannerism.

Alongside these influences from European art history, Santos’ paintings are infused with elements of his personal biography. The natural energy and movement of his forms might be seen to draw inspiration from his early upbringing in Cuba, the vivid colours and expansive ambition of his paintings from his time in the United States. The blending of cultures and influences that Santos so effortlessly achieves in his paintings echoes the global dynamism of New York City – where the artist has previously lived and worked - offering an exciting opportunity for American and international audiences to encounter, and interpret, these mesmerising and transformative works.



Cesar Santos is a Cuban-American artist, born in Santa Clara, Cuba and brought up in Miami, Florida. He studied at the New World School of the Arts in Florida, followed by a period training in Florence. Subsequently, Santos moved to New York City, immersing himself in the vibrant art scene. While in New York, he received first prize in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s photography competition, ‘It’s Time We Met’.

Santos work has been exhibited in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia, including at the Museum of Art and Design, Miami; Palazzo Cipolla, Rome; the Villa Bardini Museum, Florence; National Gallery, Costa Rica; and the Beijing World Art Museum, China. His work features in the collections of significant institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sicily, the Museo di Arte Contemporanea e del Novecento, Pistoia, and the Museum of Art and Design, Miami.

Santos currently lives and works in Florence.