His real name Alexis Leyva Machado, Kcho was born in Nueva Gerona, the main city of the Isla de la Juventud in Cuba . Graduated in 1990 from the National School of Plastic Arts in Havana, he exhibited abroad in 1991, at the Alejandro Otero Museum in Caracas (Venezuela). In 1994 he directed Regata(Regate), a set of small wooden boats and objects he collected on Cuban beaches. The same year, this installation was presented at the fifth Havana Biennial before entering the permanent collection of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. We already find there the themes of the sea, the boat - and through them of course that of migration - which will be recurrent in the work of the artist. The sea is part of the very identity of Cuba. It is inseparable from the history of the island. It was by sea that the Arawak Indians, the Spanish conquistadors and then the slave ships arrived which brought millions of slaves from the African coasts. Also recurrent in Kcho's work is his use of used materials which for Kcho are not rubbish but, on the contrary, elements charged with energy, with experience.  

In just over fifteen years Kcho has established himself as one of the great contemporary artists. The Museum Of Modern Art in New York made no mistake about it which, in 1996, acquired one of his major works, the Columna Infinita , a vertical accumulation of boat frames, oars... This subject of the Columna Infinita will often come back in his work, both sculpted and drawn or painted. 

Kcho's works are now present in some of the largest public collections (MOMA in New York, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Museo Nacional Palacio de Bellas Artes in Havana... ), he participated in nearly two hundred group exhibitions in Cuba of course, but also in France, Spain, Canada, Portugal, Senegal, Brazil…