Caracas - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro lamented the death of Cuban intellectual Roberto Fernandez Retamar, who directed the House of the Americas for decades, a key institution in the continent.

Maduro described the Cuban poet on Twitter on Sunday as exceptional, while he assured that Fernandez Retamar was one of the major figures of Cuban culture.

The Cuban poet, essayist and university professor, president of Casa de Las Americas since 1986 and member of the Cuban Academy of the Language, died on Saturday, July 20, in Havana, at the age of 89.

Fernandez Retamar is the author of dozens of poetry and essay books, among them Caliban, which is one of the major essay texts in Spanish literature and language of the 20th century.

After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he was a diplomat, legislator to the National Assembly (Parliament) and member of the Council of State.