Tonel (Antonio Eligio Fernández)
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Tonel (b. Havana, 1958)

Antonio Eligio Fernández, known as Tonel, graduated with a degree in art history from the University of Havana in 1982 and is an artist, writer, and curator. He has exhibited in the Havana and Sao Paulo Biennials and at several other institutions in Cuba and abroad. His work is included in many public and private collections, among them: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Cuba; Ludwig Forum für Interanationale Kunst, Germany; Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Columbia; and the University Art Museum at Arizona State University, USA.

As a writer and curator he has worked extensively in Cuba, Latin America, Europe, and the United States. His articles and essays on Cuban and Latin American contemporary art have been published regularly in Cuba and elsewhere.

Tonel was awarded the prize for art criticism by the Cuban Section of the International Art Critics Association (AICA) in 1991. He was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities (1997-1998) and a John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for painting and installation art (1995). He is currently a visiting artist/scholar at the Latin American Studies Center Stanford University.