Daniel Serra Badué (b. 1914, Santiago de Cuba - d. 1996, New York): He studied art at various studios and institutions in Santiago de Cuba and Havana (both in Cuba), New York City, and Barcelona, Spain. He was a recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1938 and 1939. Considered by many the godfather of Cuban art in exile, Serra Badué was one of the first winners of a Cintas Fellowship and an early member of the board of the Cintas Foundation.
A surrealist painter and graphic artist, he is one of the artists featured in Artists in Exile, a series of four television documentaries directed by Ray Blanco in 1994. He once wrote that his art was always connected to his homeland. “There's a relationship between me, as an artist, and the land where I was born,” he wrote. “I don't feel like a foreigner in any place, because I continue to create my own vision of the world.”
His work was included in the Outside Cuba exhibition, and it is in the permanent collection of the Miami-Dade Public Library. Serra Badué studied at art schools in Santiago de Cuba, Barcelona and New York, at the Art Students League, the National Academy of Design and Columbia University. He was the first Cuban-American winner of a Guggenheim fellowship, and received two fellowships in 1938 and 1939.
