Agustín Cárdenas was born in Matanzas, Cuba on 10th April 1927. The son of a tailor he entered the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Art in 1943 and studied there until 1949. He arrived in France in 1955 and settled in Montparnasse. He met André Breton, who invited him from as early as 1956 to participate in a group exhibition at the Surrealist gallery, l’Étoile Scellée. He was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, a Knight of the Legion of Honour and received the William and Norma Copley Foundation Award. As from 1968, Cárdenas lived and worked in Meudon-Bellevue and at his studio in Nogent-sur-Marne. His five sons were all born in France. Cárdenas also worked in Canada, Austria, Japan, Israel and Korea, as well as Carrara in Italy where he sculpted marble pieces and at Pietrasanta, where he cast his bronze sculptures. Agustin Cárdenas died in Havana, Cuba in 2001 and is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. Between 1956 and 2012, Cárdenas took part in hundred or so group exhibitions and was the focus of some forty monographic exhibitions.
