Victor Manuel is considered the father of modern Cuban painting for being the first to consistently blend Cuban subject matter with the visual language of the School of Paris. A graduate of Havana's Academy of San Alejandro, he developed in the late 1920s, during two brief stays in Europe, a personal and resolute style adapted from the art of Cézanne, Gauguin, and early Renaissance masters. He found in the simplification of forms and strong colors of Post-Impressionist painting the appropriate means to express his vision of a peaceful and tropical world, located in the outskirts of the Cuban cities of Havana and Matanzas. He concentrated his idealized view of the island in two themes: the female figure and suburban landscapes.

Victor Manuel's most famous painting, Gitana Tropical (1929), is the prototype for his representation of the female figure throughout his long career. He followed regional and European traditions in depicting mulatto women as exotic and sensual. His own interpretation is the figure's poetic mood of serenity and melancholy. Although less frequently, Victor Manuel also painted dual-figure compositions representing friends or lovers, touching or embracing, in quiet companionship. A strong and harmonious bonding between the figures is emphasized through the formal interplay of their poses, gestures and gazes. The same holds true for the figures' relation to their environment, an idealized space at once private and public, rural and urban. Paradoxically, these couples seek the viewer's intimate attention by their uninterrupted proximity to the picture plane and their engaging looks. Muchachas is an excellent example of this major direction dating from the artist's mid-career.
Juan A. Martinez, Ph.D
Miami, September 1995