Tobacco Leaves sculpture by cuban artist Janio Nunez (8 photos + 1 video)

• Tweet

• Tweet

The cuban artist Janio Nunez has an amazing art of making incredible sculptures exclusively from tobacco leaves. He make sculptures from small size to life size, Janio started working with Tobacco when he was small after looking at his grandfather roll cigars at the factory. He started copying his grandfather and ended up becoming a tobacco leaf roller himself in the factory. Later he was sent to Varadero, Cuba’s largest resort, to roll cigars for tourists. Everything was working fine until one day he started seeing his co-workers as they are made up of Tobacco leaves. He used to get very scared and close his eyes, after sometime everything was fine and normal. This happened for about four months, His friends took him to a doctor but treatment does not worked very much, Janio decided to fix this problem by himself.

Photo by Amado de la Rosa Labrada
One night images of Tobacco people came to him again, instead of getting scared he started making a sculptures and that night he created his first piece, got some relief and he thought in his mind that there might be some supernatural power who was trying to tell him what to do. From that day he gave his total attention on this work and made some good sculptures of famous people by leaves of Tobacco.

Photo © AFP/Adalberto Roque

He was knowing it very well the art which he has is something differnet so the next three weeks he tried to gain an audience with the manager of the hotel he worked in, to show them his sculptures. and he got the chance he said his manager to tell him whether the art is worth or not, If they are worthless he will destroy them all immediately. But his boss was shocked after seeing his incredible and unique sculptures made by Tobacco leaves and arranged for Janio to display his sculptures in the first edition of the Festival del Habano.

Photo © AFP/Adalberto Roque

Later on he continued doing this work putting on a series called “Famous Smokers”, which included miniature sculptures of icons like Fidel Castro, Jack Nicholson, Winston Churchill, Groucho Marx, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Che Guevara, just to name a few. He was invited in various exhibitions in the world.

Photo © AFP/Adalberto Roque

But it was not only that much, In the year 2000 he created a life-size sculpture of British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, smoking a cigar. Where he caught the real attention of media and even received praises from Churchill’s grand-daughter, who came to Cuba to see the amazing work of art first-hand.

Photo © AFP/Adalberto Roque

Today Janio is running a workshop near Guanabo, near the sea just 30 minutes from Havana. The artist dreams to make a largest masterpiece of Tobacco leaves, He also wants to start a museum of tobacco art.

Photo © AFP/Adalberto Roque

Photo © AFP/Adalberto Roque

Photo © AFP/Adalberto Roque