Diego Torres is one of the greatest artists to emerge from modern day Cuba. He approaches the landscape with an intense attention to detail which reflects the base of a highly trained eye. He is a studied artist with an inexhaustible knowledge in the history of painting and in the technique that is applied to his hyperrealist style. Memory and symbolism have long been tied to landscape, particularly in Latin American art. The land becomes a metaphor for existence and embodies the history of a culture. Torres has brought this medium to a new dimension as he draws the viewer into a place that is at once specific and universal, broad and focused, as is symbolized by a small personal effect to be found in his landscapes, often connected to issues of migration and subtly referring to the human condition on the island. Artist Statement: "I wanted to approach landscape in a manner removed from the tropicalist form that is typically embraced by different artists: I wanted to find a different angle. I think that, after new analysis brought to landscape by Tomas Sanchez and his school of thought, this is a time in which landscape (at least from my point of view) is taking on a new role. From this emerges an almost spiritual necessity for the new values that I am presenting in my painting, which emerge from a move towards a more human reflection and a separation from the commercial aspects of paintings. The principle of my painting is to bring about a new approach to the landscape theme: to merge other ideas into the landscape so that, despite its obvious and fecund presence, it is no longer the landscape that is the protagonist, but it is just another element, giving way to secondary intentions." Diego Torres graduated from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Art in 1996 and has been exhibiting since 1994. His work has been shown throughout Cuba, in Costa Rica and the United States (most recently at Art Miami 2003). He has received several awards including the first place at the Biennial Landscape Salon (Havana, Cuba 2003). His work is in private collections in Cuba, Mexico, Costa Rica, Spain and the United States.