Humberto Calzada (Havana, Cuba, 1944), nurtured his childhood dream of becoming an architect by sketching houses he encountered on his daily journey to his elementary school, The Saint George School in El Vedado.
After his family relocated to Miami in 1960 following the Cuban Revolution, and attended Coral Gables Senior High School. Humberto then pursued engineering studies at the University of Miami, earning a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering in 1966 and an MBA in 1968.
While working at IBM in Boca Raton, his passion for architecture and design continued to grow. Transitioning to become a General Contractor, he constructed several homes in Miami Dade County, including his own residence in South Miami where he still resides today. Concurrently, he delved into painting as a hobby, seeking to capture the opulence of Colonial and Neoclassical Havana homes and the vivid colors and textures of the Caribbean, pieced together from memories and the sketches from his childhood that he had brought with him.
In the mid-1970s, Humberto left his corporate role at IBM and other business ventures to focus on painting full-time. His debut solo exhibition took place at the Bacardi Art Gallery in Miami in 1975. Since then, he has been represented by galleries across the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America, with his works adorning private and corporate collections, as well as numerous museums throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Humberto welcomes visitors into his luminous and airy studio in the same house he built for his family in 1979, and where his artistic journey continues to unfold.