1897, Havana, Cuba / 1969, Havana, Cuba.

His vocation for painting manifests itself very early; Thus he enrolled in 1910 at the San Alejandro Academy where he was a disciple of Leopoldo Romañach, and a year later he was appointed professor of drawing.

In 1925, concerns about changing the system of artistic expression in Cuba pushed him to travel to Europe for the first time. He begins to sign Victor Manuel during his stay in Paris, where he knows the works of the Italian primitives and also those made by Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

He returns to Cuba in 1927, and travels again to Europe in 1929, travels through Spain and Belgium, resides in France. In Paris he painted his oil painting Gitana Tropical, an example of the new language, a symbol of all his art.

He said that mulatto women looked like gypsies. Victor Manuel was one of the initiators of modern painting in Cuba. The undisputed leadership of that revolt against academicism belongs to this artist and together with him, Carlos Enriquez, Eduardo Abela and Fidelio Ponce, all representative figures of what was known as the first avant-garde of Cuban art.

In 1969, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba opens a retrospective exhibition of his work. This important institution treasures part of his heritage.