Lourdes Gomez-Franca

Lourdes was born in Havana in 1933.[1] Her family was well-established in Cuba and she was raised in Havana’s wealthy Vedado neighborhood of stately homes. Her grandfather was Cuban leader Porfirio Franca (b. 1878), a lawyer, banker, and economist who was a member of Cuba’s Pentarchy of 1933.[2]

Her early life, however, was marked by repeated tragedy that proved to be highly formative to her. Her mother, Josefina, was killed by bandits when Lourdes was 10 months old.[3] Her father subsequently began to deteriorate mentally and physically, suffering from depression, tuberculosis, and possibly schizophrenia. He was institutionalized when Lourdes was five, after which she and her older sister were raised by their grandparents.[4] Their father died in 1946 when they were 13 and 14, respectively. Lourdes and her sister were both present in the hospital and witnessed his last words. Their grandfather then passed in 1950.

Art proved to be a powerful outlet for Lourdes early on. She started painting as an untrained prodigy by the age of three, focusing mainly on religious themes such as the Madonna and Child for her first years.[5] She was encouraged by teachers and formally studied painting at the Academia San Alejandro at the age of 20.[6] By the 1950s Havana newspapers were praising her impressionistic style. One of her non-religious painting series covered were domestic depictions of her grandfather’s home, showing its high ceiling, marble floors, and curving grand staircase.[7] She became a known name and respected in Cuba at this time, even championed by leading Cuban art figures such as Victor Manuel and Carlos Enriquez.[8] By the end of the decade, however, her life would have several dramatic turns that resulted in major shifts in her career.

Lourdes had achieved significant early success and recognition in her home country during its mid-century artistic flourishing. Despite this, she wanted to expand her audience and be known outside of Cuba, as well as learn new skills. She then went to Paris in 1957 at the age of 24 and spent several months there.[9] Though spanning less than a year, this period proved to be a highly significant and pivotal point in her life and career.

She studied fine art directly under two leading masters of the time, learning painting from Andre Lhote and etching and engraving from Stanley Hayter.[10] She was living in the Cite Universite and immersed in the mid-century Parisian art scene. It was also in this time when schizophrenia began to surface in Lourdes' life, a key development that greatly impacted much of her work thereafter. Though it was initially gradual, it had became progressively worse until she experienced a sexual assault incident that precipitated a mental breakdown. She was then hospitalized shortly afterwards, her first in a series of mental health hospitalizations throughout her life. After her Paris hospitalization, Lourdes returned to Cuba accompanied by a psychiatrist and for a short time was able to find a new balance in her life.[11] She would revisit her traumatic Paris period several times in later paintings and poems.

Following the events of the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s rise to power, Lourdes relocated permanently to Miami in November 1960. She would remain there and continue to paint the rest of her life until her death in 2018. Over the course of her more than fifty-year career in the United States, she participated in several exhibitions of her paintings and published poetry collections in both Spanish and English. As in Cuba, Lourdes was a significant presence in the exile community in Miami but often struggled to expand her audience beyond it into a broader mainstream. This was partly due to the crippling impact of her mental health on her career when it came to sustaining high-profile events such as book launches and major art exhibitions.[12] This would remain a constant regret for the remainder of her life. Despite this, she befriended several key figures in the Miami art scene early on who would become important contacts for her throughout the enduring American period of her career.

She was a close friend of Coral Gables-based Cuban fine art dealer and collector Marta Permuy. Lourdes had become a fixture in the Permuy Gallery during the 1970s as well as Permuy’s subsequent art salon social circles in the decades after the gallery’s closure. Permuy was also a frequent dealer of her artwork. Lourdes painted portraits of much of the Permuy family[13] and remained close with Marta for the reminder of their lives, ultimately dying within months of each other. Another prominent art dealer of Gomez Franca’s work was Coconut Grove-based Barbara Greene, who represented her for ten years from 1993 to Greene’s death in 2003. Greene became an emphatic supporter of her’s after seeing one of her paintings of a cathedral over a fireplace at the home of artist Pablo Cano.[14] Greene was active in the period of Gomez Franca’s career that included the publication of her last poetry collection, El Niño De Guano.

Other significant friends and contacts included fellow Cuban exile artists Dionisio Perkins (b. 1929) and Miguel Jorge. The three would often attend art and social events as a trio and had supported as well as influenced each other’s work and careers. Jorge, who died in 1984, wrote the artist statement used for Lourdes' 1981 solo exhibition in Coral Gables.[15] Pablo Cano also become a key friend and artistic collaborator. They worked together on her last two published poetry collections in her lifetime.[16] Cano, thirty years her junior and now more known for his sculptural work, provided the illustrations to each poem in a style that was strongly reminiscent of Lourdes' own.