 This idealized vision featured strongly in the portraits and landscapes of Victor Manuel (1897 - 1969), who was particularly impressed by the works of Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin during his two relatively brief stays in Paris.A San Alejandro graduate highly skilled in drawing and composition, Manuel chose to apply primitivist simplicity to his Cuban subjects - a favorite being the female face - and brought out qualities of melancholy and strength, as captured in "La Gitana Tropical" ("The Tropical Gipsy", 1929), which is considered by critics to be one of the defining pieces of Cuban Avant-garde art.The emphasis which Carlos Enríquez (1900 - 1957) and Fidelio Ponce (1895 - 1949) placed on the themes of change, transformation, and death have had an enduring impact on Cuban art.