Tony Lopez Sculpture

Cuban-American sculptor Tony Lopez dies at 92

Miami - Famed sculptor Tony Lopez, whose career spanned more than 70 years in Cuba and the United States, died over the weekend in Miami of respiratory failure, El Nuevo Herald reported. He was 92.

Lopez, who would have been 93 on Sept. 6, died on Sunday at the southwest Miami hospital where he was being treated for a kidney ailment.

The artist was known for doing "caricature sculptures" of figures in public and political life that were later published in the Cuban magazine Bohemia.

The most controversial was one characterizing the president of Cuba in the 1930s and '40s, Ramon Grau San Martin, as the devil, the daily said.

In 1939 Lopez won his "first major prize, the medal awarded by the Fine Arts Circle for the bust of a union leader."

"Hounded by the Fulgencio Batista government for his political views, Lopez went into exile in Miami in 1958," the newspaper said.

He left his mark on the South Florida city with a bust of Antonio Maceo and several monuments in the Miami-Dade County district of Little Havana. He also designed the original models for the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach and did a sculpture of the ex-president and founder of the National Cuban-American Foundation, or FNCA, the anti-Castro activist Jorge Mas Canosa, for a park in Miami Beach.

He also created rooster figures for Miami's famous Calle Ocho inspired by Pepe, his pet rooster that had free run of his studio.

His pride in being Cuban is reflected in numerous sculptures of national heroes like Cuba's Jose Marti located in New Orleans, as well as one of Cuban scientist Carlos J. Finlay in Philadelphia. He also left statues of the Venezuelan Simon Bolivar in Miami Beach, and one of Pope John Paul II in Angola.