Discover the contemporary work of Papucho

Jorge Lázaro Pérez Fraga, known as "Papucho", was born in Havana in 1972 and currently lives in northern Germany. Since childhood he has felt drawn to the arts. His personal passion became painting. Despite this he never went to art school and remained self-taught. He owes his current artist name "Papucho" to his Cuban grandmother, who was nicknamed "little daddy" in his childhood among friends and family. Growing up between Cuban rum, tobacco and the Yoruba religion, he first trained as an accountant, completed his military service and finally began to paint on his own. In 1998, "Papucho" began to exhibit and sell his works. He established relationships with other painters, with the dealers at the art markets at the cathedral and later also at the Malecón in Havana. The year 1999 was decisive for his artistic career, when he met Joel Ferrer, one of the most famous Cuban landscape painters. He works for him as an assistant, learns his technique and develops his own, typical style. In a surrealist manner, "Papucho" merges urban landscapes, lifts the everyday environment out of normality and makes it accessible in a new way. In this way he puts his personal "stamp" on the real, only subconsciously perceived everyday scenery and gives it a new, individual and lively identity. In Buenavista, a district of Havana, he meets Carsten Möller, a young German film student. Together with other artists, he helps him to restore the old "Social Club de Buenavista". to restore it in order to make a film that shows the true story of this working-class district. "Papucho" sees his pictures as windows into another dimension. With moving facades, strong colors and three-dimensional perspectives, the pictures convey the history and life that he believes is inherent in every body and every place. But above all, he wants to express his own positive attitude to life - also to a world without borders - and to bring joy to the viewer with pictures full of joie de vivre, strength and harmony.