A N I T A   G U E R R A
B.F.A. ´78 & M.F.A. ´84, Painting
Tyler School of Art at Temple University (now Tyler School of Art and Architecture), Philadelphia, PA, USA
 
Queridos
    Opening June 24, 2025, 5 to 7 pm                      
Tyler School of Art and Architecture
Atrium Entrance: Norris St. between 12th & 13th St., Philadelphia
 
Queridos is the sequel to my 2020 show Tres Patrias in Rome, and to my 2016 exhibition Mi Cuba, La Mia Italia at the Casa de la Obra Pia in Old Havana, based on an illustrated memoir of the same title.
 
Tres Patrias was scheduled at the Temple Rome Gallery in March 2020, and subsequently at Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia in May, but was canceled due to the COVID-19 worldwide lockdown.  Tres Patrias eventually took place as a Facebook Live event in my studio in November 2020, with a virtual exhibition on Kunstmatrix, but the event in the U.S.A. was indefinitely suspended. Nevertheless, I still felt an urgency to share my exhibition at Tyler in Philadelphia to acknowledge what the city and the university had given to my family. Philadelphia had offered us refuge in 1961 after we left the Castro Revolution in Cuba. My family settled in the City of Brotherly Love, and most of my siblings continue to live in the area. Besides me, six close family members graduated from Temple University, four in Fine and Performing Arts and Architecture at Tyler.  Hence, I was thrilled when Associate Dean of Tyler, Kate Wingert-Playdon, and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Nichola Kinch immediately backed my proposal for Queridos at the Atrium of Tyler School of Art and Architecture for June 2025.
 
Queridos displays a visual, multi-media kaleidoscope of my journey from an idyllic childhood in Havana to the Mother Cabrini Orphanage in Philadelphia, continuing to a life as an artist and professor in Rome. It includes monotypes printed on Cuban special editions commemorating Fidel Castro’s death, hypothetical chronological superimpositions of my siblings, evoking the question, “What if?” What if my family had stayed behind, or what if the Revolution had not violently separated me from my parents and my brother and sisters through Operation Peter Pan?  I link various geographical, political, and generational realities through my paintings, watercolors, embroideries, writings, letters, artifacts, and videos.
 
These tangible visual affirmations all informed my illustrated family memoir. In these five years, the title evolved from Tres Patrias to Queridos as my writing organically shifted focus from the three countries I called home to the beloved people who helped me and my family along the way.
 
The new title also refers to the Spanish salutation in letters, “queridos”, or “dear”. This is how the hundreds of letters and aerograms written in 1961 during our one-year separation began. This is how I addressed the letters to my deceased parents when I finally returned to Havana in 2015. In Queridos, I show a documentary video on my father, Architect Juan Ignacio Guerra, produced and edited by Alberto Nappi and me.  Another shorter interview of my mother, Josefina, by my nephew Ian Fitzgerald, is embedded in the floor-to-ceiling mosaic of artworks. On the side wall, I display vintage photographs of my father´s architectural works in Havana from 1948 until 1961, with comparative snapshots of the same residences during my 2015-2019 trips. The second vitrine contains original telegrams and heirlooms, including a vest my grandmother knit for my father seventy-five years ago, based on Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie painting. Our Guerra-Recio connection to the Fine and Performing Arts extends through generations on both sides of the family, including my great-grandfather Guerra who founded a school of Fine Arts near Matanzas, my paternal great-aunt, Teresa, who was a painter, and my maternal aunt, Gloria Recio, who danced with the Alicia Alonso Ballet.
 
I am deeply grateful for the Temple University Presidential Humanities and Arts Research Award of 2018-2020. It provided funds for return trips to Havana, Miami, and Philadelphia to pursue my visual and written documentation for this show and memoir.
 
To my siblings, Lourdes (d.2009), Jo, Tony, Julia, Juan, Tere, and cousin, Eduardo, whose lengthy conversations, generous contributions of photographs and articles, loving support, and occasional disagreements often filled gaps in my story, thank you.  Above all, this show and memoir Queridos (soon to be published), are dedicated to my dear parents, “mis queridos” Juan Ignacio and Josefina Guerra, whose courage, compassion, and faith remind me to never give up on my ideals and to always stand up for the truth, no matter what.
 
Anita Guerra
Rome, Italy /Philadelphia, PA, USA
June 24, 2025
                                                                                         
@anitaguerraroma; anita.guerra@temple.edu
https://www.anitaguerra.com
 
For the ongoing support of Emilia Zankina, Dean, and Mary Conran Associate Dean, Temple University Rome, my sincerest gratitude.  Thank you to Shara Wasserman, Director of Exhibitions/ TUR Gallery, for the critical text. A special thanks to my sister Jo, Maria Josefa Guerra Fitzgerald, B.F.A., Philadelphia College of Art, and my nephew, Architect Andrew Guerra Sponseller, Tyler/Temple University B.Arch., R.S.D.I. M.Arch., for their help installing and dismantling this show.