The 2025 National Visual Arts Prize was awarded 6 February to Cuban visual artist Roberto Salas, who has documented important historical events with his lens and whose work has been recognized both in Cuba and abroad.
The decision to grant him the award was made by a jury composed of researcher, curator, and art critic Margarita Ruiz; curator and art critic Nelson Herrera Ysla; Manuel Hernández, 2024 National Visual Arts Prize winner; essayist and researcher Rafael Acosta de Arriba; and art historian Rosa Juampere.
The 2025 National Visual Arts Prize recognizes the visual work of an artist who has dedicated his life to it and whose talent and love for the art form are undeniable.
Born in 1940 in the Bronx, New York, he studied photography with his father, Osvaldo Salas (1914-1992). At a young age, in 1957, his photograph “The Flag and the Lady” was published in Life magazine and other newspapers in the city.
His work has graced the pages of important publications in Cuba and abroad. Alongside the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, he immortalized significant moments such as the Commander-in-Chief’s second visit to New York, on the occasion of his first address to the United Nations.
Roberto Salas was a contributor to the Cuban magazine Bohemia, a photographer for the newspaper Revolución, for which he served as a correspondent in New York in 1960, and the founder of the Prensa Latina bureau and photo correspondent for Revolución at the United Nations.
He was a war correspondent in Vietnam, and for his work during and after the war, he received the Friendship Medal, awarded by the Council of Ministers of Vietnam.
Along with this recognition, he also holds the First Prize for Sports Photography, Reus, Spain (1970); and the Asahi Shimbun International Photographic Salon Award, Tokyo, Japan.
He is a founding member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC), and is also an honorary member of the Cuban Fund for Photographic Images (FCIF).
Rafael Acosta de Arriba wrote of him: “Roberto Salas, a witness to his time, belongs to a select group of photographers (beyond that extraordinary group of the epic) who have contributed to Cuban photography being considered art.”
“Salas’s work is a multifaceted, profound, and visceral portrait of Cuba. His comprehensive, incisive, intelligent gaze, imbued with an exquisite, cultivated sensibility, has examined his surroundings with curiosity and eagerness.”
Cuba 50 
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