Carlos Quintana (Havana, 1966) graduated from the San Alejandro School of Fine Arts, and the Superior Institute of Industrial Design, both in Havana.

His works show the influence of paradigmatic artists such as Schnabel, Baselitz, Kiefer, and Kippenberger. Quintana did not have a rapid rise in the national art scene of Cuba. One reason for this was that as a painter he traveled along alternative paths and did not participate in collective projects. He was a kind of renegade “underground” artist. His pictorial works include disturbing codes and discourses, as well as an almost obsessive interest in bearing witness to the offensive passages that show the violence and the filth of everyday life. He usually takes classic historical art scenes to represent daily conflicts, and his tendency to use a palette of solid colors adds a symbolic character to his work, which is full of cultural references.