We have no information about the life of Horacio Valdés, known as El Chino, apart from the fact that he was born in San Antonio de los Baños, a town in the province of Artemisa in western Cuba. His drawings, in India ink, depict fantastical creatures made up of a multitude of interlinking zoomorphic forms sometimes arranged symmetrically. The figurative elements that often appear in his works are flowers, birds, fish, imps and mammals.