Baruj Salinas - Sea Overture II

Baruj Salinas (1935–2024)

Mixed Media on Canvas Diptych, 2016

30 x 60 inches (overall)

Sea Overture II (2016) is an exceptional late-career diptych by Baruj Salinas that exemplifies the detailed refinement, atmospheric sophistication, and meditative depth that defined the artist’s mature practice during the final decade of his life. Monumental in visual presence and quietly powerful in emotional resonance, this large-scale mixed-media composition stands among MLA Gallery’s signature works by Salinas and reflects the distilled mastery of an artist whose contribution to contemporary abstraction continued to evolve and deepen well into the 21st century.

Executed as a rare diptych spanning 30 x 60 inches overall, Sea Overture II possesses a commanding, immersive presence that enhances its contemplative qualities. The two-panel format allows the composition to unfold rhythmically across space, creating a dynamic visual dialogue between movement and stillness. Salinas employs watercolor, gouache, pastel, charcoal, and graphite on canvas with both restraint and precision, achieving luminous tonal transitions and layered surfaces that reveal the artist’s uniquely poetic understanding of abstraction.

Created in 2016, the work coincides with an especially important and historically resonant period in Salinas’ career — the culmination of his internationally recognized involvement with The Torah Project, the landmark interfaith initiative that would lead to Salinas entering the permanent collection of The Vatican in 2017 during a ceremony presided over by Pope Francis, with the artist in attendance. That extraordinary moment further solidified Baruj Salinas’ position not only as a major figure in contemporary Cuban and Latin American art, but as an artist whose work carried profound spiritual, philosophical, and transcultural significance on a global stage.

Sea Overture II illustrates Salinas’ explorations of the elemental forces of nature — sea, atmosphere, horizon, light, and geological forces — translating them into a deeply introspective visual language that balances serenity with underlying emotional intensity. Bold yet fluid, bands of nuanced earth tones are accented by vivid bursts of red, softened sea sprays of atmospheric whites, and gestural markings that drift across the canvas with meditative subtlety, evoking tides, weathered surfaces, shifting landscapes, and elemental forces without fully resolving into literal representation. The work demonstrates Salinas’ ability to move beyond conventional abstraction into realms of contemplation, spiritual suggestion, and poetic ambiguity.

Unlike the delicately layered symbolic structures of some earlier periods, Sea Overture II reveals the confidence and clarity of a master artist working with complete formal assurance and a re-embrace of color. Every gesture appears distilled to its essential necessity. The result is a painting that feels simultaneously expansive and intimate, restrained yet emotionally profound — all hallmarks of Salinas’ highly refined late style.

Widely regarded as one of the foremost contemporary Cuban masters of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Baruj Salinas exhibited internationally in more than 150 solo exhibitions and received numerous prestigious awards throughout his six-decade career. Trained initially in architecture at Kent State University before dedicating himself fully to painting, Salinas developed an aesthetic distinguished by spatial sophistication, intellectual rigor, and metaphysical sensitivity. His honors included the Prize to Excellency at the VII Grand Prix International de Peinture in Cannes, first prize at the IV Pan American Exhibition in Miami, first prize at the First Prize in the VI Latin American Print Biennial, and, in his later years, the 2021 Amelia Peláez Prize sponsored by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Today, Salinas’ work resides in the permanent collections of more than 35 museums and institutions worldwide, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Fundació Joan Miró, Museo Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Museo del Barrio (NYC), Phoenix Art Museum, San Antonio Museum of Art, Tampa Museum of Art, and The Vatican’s permanent collection. Increasing institutional recognition and posthumous scholarly reassessment following the artist’s passing in 2024 have significantly heightened collector demand for important original Salinas works, particularly museum-quality late-career paintings demonstrating the fully matured evolution of his practice.

In scale, rarity, condition, and historical context, Sea Overture II represents an increasingly scarce opportunity to acquire a major late-period Baruj Salinas work of exceptional wall presence and institutional caliber. The rarity of large-scale Salinas diptychs further distinguishes the work within the artist’s oeuvre and reinforces its significance for serious collectors of contemporary Cuban, Latin American, and postwar abstract art.

MLA Gallery proudly guarantees the authenticity and provenance of this work in writing through its longstanding relationship with the Baruj Salinas Legacy Estate (BSLE).

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Artwork Details

Artist: Baruj Salinas

Title: Sea Overture II

Date: 2016

Medium: Watercolor, gouache, pastel, charcoal, and graphite on canvas

Format: Diptych (two panels)

Dimensions: 30 x 60 inches (overall)

Category: Contemporary Cuban abstract painting / Postwar abstraction

Style: Contemporary abstraction / Abstract Expressionism

Condition: Excellent; professionally framed

Authentication: Fully guaranteed by MLA Gallery

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Historical & Institutional Significance

●      Important late-career Baruj Salinas diptych

●      One of MLA Gallery’s signature Salinas works

●      Rare large-scale two-panel composition with exceptional architectural wall presence

●      Created during the period surrounding Salinas’ historic Vatican recognition and Torah Project involvement

●      Museum-caliber example of contemporary Cuban and Latin American abstraction

●      Reflects Salinas’ mature exploration of nature, atmosphere, and elemental abstraction

●      Investment-grade work demonstrating the artist’s highly refined late style

For more info call us at (323) 792-3779, or to see a greater selection of the gallery work, please visit our Artnet site at:

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Arte del Siglo XX, Casa de la Asegurada, Alicante, Spain.

Bacardi Collection, Miami, Fl

Beit Uri Museum, Israel. 

Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain. 

Cabinet des Estampes, Geneva, Switzerland.

Cuban Museum of Art, Miami, Florida. 

Fundacion Joan Miro, Barcelona, Spain.

Fundación Maria Zambrano, Velez-Malaga, Spain.

Fundacion Miguel Aleman, Mexico City

Institute of International Education, New York, NY. 

Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City

Musee Villa du Parc, Annemasse, France

John Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida. 

Lowe Art Museum (Cuban Collection) Coral Gables, Fl.

McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas. 

Museo Alvar Carrillo Gil, Mexico City

Ayuntamiento de Soria, Spain

Museo Arte Contemporaneo LatinoAmericano (MACLA), La Plata, Argentina.

Museo Cuevas, Mexico City

Museo de Arte Moderno, Ibiza, Spain.

Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City 

Museo de Villafames, Villafames, Spain.

Museo del Barrio, New York, NY 

Museo Rayo, Roldanillo, Colombia.

Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City

Museo Nacional D'Árt de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain. 

Museum of Art, Budapest, Hungary.

Museum of the Americas (OAS), Washington, DC.

Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, Michigan.

Pemex Collection, Mexico City 

Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix, Arizona. 

Public Library, City of Miami, Miami, Florida.

San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas.

University of Ohio Museum of Art, Miami, Ohio.

Villa de Montecatini Collection, Italy 

Museo Maria Zambrano, Velez-Malaga, Spain