Manuel Mendive Hoyo is a Cuban painter, performance artist, and sculptor whose work draws deeply from his native Cuba and African oral traditions. Born into a Santería-practicing family, Mendive developed a lifelong engagement with Yoruba-Lucumí mythology, the history of the Middle Passage, and ritual dance, all of which inform his richly symbolic visual language. 

In his gouache paintings—such as Untitled (1987)—Mendive creates imaginary anthropomorphic figures set within Surreal landscapes. These hybrid beings often fuse human and animal features; in one striking composition, a spotted figure appears with three breasts and six tentacles, embodying his syncretic spiritual and aesthetic vision.

Mendive graduated with honors in painting and sculpture from Academia de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro in 1962. He held his first solo exhibition in Havana in 1964 and later gained international recognition, including participation in the Venice Biennale in 1988. In 2018, he presented a new body of work at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, alongside photographs by his longtime collaborator John Rowe documenting a performance staged in a Cuban rainforest.

Across media, Mendive’s practice merges spirituality, history, and the body, affirming his role as one of Cuba’s most significant contemporary artists.