Desiderio Navarro Pérez was a Cuban critic and theorist of literature, art and culture. His work was aimed at the exercise of criticism on scientific bases. Art theory, aesthetics, culturology and literary sciences are widely present in his works. He translated texts from these disciplines into Spanish from twenty languages.
Navarro was born on May 13, 1948, in Camagüey, and died in Havana on December 7, 2017.[1] [2] In the middle of the sixties he started to publish his first articles and studies in several Cuban and foreign magazines, in the field of literature, visual arts, aesthetics and cultural science.
Over time, his articles were published in magazines and papers in North and Latin America, and Europe. He has been a visiting professor at various universities and institutes in the world, and he organizes debates between international speakers. His books have been published in more than ten languages.[3]
In 1972 he founded the journal Criterios. In 1994 the book series Criterios, and in 2011 the e-zine Denken Pensée Thought Mysl. Information Service on European Cultural Thought. In this leading magazine (cf. www.criterios.es) he brings together important essays from various languages on themes like aesthetics, literature, art and culture. Next to those, he writes articles himself as well.
He has translated from sixteen Romance, Germanic, Slavic and Uraloaltaic languages over 450 theoretical texts on literature, arts, culture and society. These translations have been published in Cuba, Spain and Mexico.
In 2003 he founded the Center for Cultural Theory Criterios (Havana).
In 1996 Navarro received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Furthermore, he received a grant from the Prince Claus Fund from the Netherlands twice, in 1999 and 2005, in order to be able to continue his project Criterios.[4]
Furthermore, he was honored with a number of awards, of which the following is a (translated) selection:
In recognition of his life's work, in 2022 the University of Sancti Spiritus Jose Marti Perez created the Desiderio Navarro Honorary Chair in order to carry out cultural research and study the work of this Cuban scientist.
Navarro wrote and published the following books:
Navarro has edited 22 anthologies of which the following is a selection. Some works have been reprinted several times.