Cuban Art
Encyclopedia
Cuban art is a very diverse cultural blend of African, European and North American design reflecting the diverse demographic of the island. Cuban artists embraced European modernism
and the early part of the 20th century saw a growth in Cuban vanguardism
movements, these movements were characterized by a mixture of modern artistic genres. Some of the more celebrated 20th century Cuban artists include Amelia Peláez
(1896-1968), best known for a series of mural
projects and painter Wifredo Lam
(1902-1982) who created a highly personal version of modern primitivism
.
More internationally known is the work of photographer Alberto Korda
, whose photographs following the early days of the Cuban Revolution
included a picture of Che Guevara
which was to become one of the most recognizable images of 20th century. There is a flourishing street art
movement influenced by Latin American artists José Guadalupe Posada
and the muralist Diego Rivera
In the late 19th century, landscapes dominated Cuban art and classicism was still the preferred genre.
The radical artistic movements that transformed European art in the first decades of the century arrived in Latin America in the 1920s to form part of a vigorous current of artistic, cultural, and social innovation.
By the late 1920s, the Vanguardia artists had rejected the academic conventions of Cuba's national art academy. In their formative years, many had lived in Paris, where they studied and absorbed the tenets of surrealism
, cubism
, and modernist primitivism. Modernism burst on the Cuban scene as part of the critical movement of national regeneration that arose in opposition to the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, American neo-colonial control and the consequent economic crisis. They returned to Cuba committed to new artistic innovation and keen to embrace the heritage of their island. These artists became increasingly political in their ideology, viewing the rural poor as symbols of national identity in contrast to the ruling elite of post independence Cuba. The vanguardia artists achieved international recognition in 2003 with the Modern Cuban Painting show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, subsequently showing in Paris.
Vanguard leader [Eduardo Abela] was typical of the movement, a painter who studied in Paris, Abela discovered his homeland Cuba from abroad apparently motivated by a combination of distance and nostalgia. On his return, Abela entered a highly productive period of work. His murals of Cuban life were complemented by cartoons which became social critiques of Cuban life under authoritarian president Gerardo Machado
.
After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cuban artists became more isolated from the anti-establishment artistic movements of the United States and Europe. Though artists continued to produce work in Cuba, many pursued their careers in exile.
While some artists felt it was in their best interests to leave Cuba and produce their art, some artists stayed behind, either happy or merely content to be creating art in Cuba, which was sponsored by the government. Because it was state sponsored, an implied censorship occurred, since artists wouldn’t want to make art that was against the revolutionary movement as that was the source of their funding. It was during the 1980s in which art began to reflect true uninfluenced expression. The “rebirth” of expression in Cuban art was greatly affected by the emergence of a new generation of Cuban. This generation did not remember the revolution directly, nor did they feel angst from having not been a larger part in forming the nation.
By the late 1970s many of the graduates of the school of the arts in Cuba, “the Facultad de Artes Plasticas of the Instituto Superior de Arte” (founded in 1976) were going to work as schoolteachers, teaching art to young Cubans across the island. This gave a platform for the graduates to be able to teach students about freedom of expression. This meant freedom of expression in many forms including medium, message, and style of art. It was this new level of experimentation and expression that was able to enable the movement of the 1980s.
Cubans saw the introduction of an art exhibit titled “Volumen Uno” in 1981, an exhibit that featured contemporary Cuban artists displaying their work in a series of one man exhibitions. Three years later, the introduction of the “Havana Bienal” assisted in the further progression of the liberation of art and free speech therein.
This age of artist was dedicated to people who were willing to take risks in their art and truly express themselves, rather than to express only things that supported the political movement. While looking at art of the 1980s we see a trend in use of the shape of Cuba itself as inspiration for art. One piece, Immediately Geographic by artist Florencio Gelabert Soto, is a sculpture in the shape of Cuba, but is broken into many pieces. One interpretation could reflect the still unequal treatment towards artists, and the repression they were under. A movement that mirrored this artistic piece was underway in which the shape of Cuba became a token in the artwork in a phase known as “tokenization.” This artwork often combined the shape of the island of Cuba with other attributes of the nation, such as the flag. By combining the various symbols of Cuba together the artists were proudly proclaiming ‘this is who we are’. Some art critics and historians however will argue that this was partially due to the isolated nature of the island, and that use of the island in artwork represented a feeling of being alone; as with all art, the intention of the artist can have many interpretations.
, whose oil The Siesta, represents the apogee of the Cuban-inspired painting and the starting point of the surrealist cycle, Eduardo Abela
, Fidelio Ponce de León
, and Carlos Enríquez Gómez
. Born around the turn of the century, these artists grew up in turmoil of constructing a new nation and reached maturity when Cubans engaged in discovering and inventing a national identity. They fully shared in the sense of confidence, renovation, and nationalism that characterized Cuban progressive intellectuals in the second quarter of the twentieth century.
Antonio Gattorno and Eduardo Abela were the earliest painters of their generation to adapt modern European and Mexican art to the interpretation of their Cuban subjects. They also found in the directness and idealization of early Renaissance painting an effective model for their expression of Cuban themes. These painters’ criollo images, for all their differences, shared a modern primitivism view of Cuba as an exotic, timeless, and rural inhabited land inhibited by simple and sensual, if also sad and melancholic people. Although rooted in Cuba’s natural and cultural environment, the vision of lo cubano (the Cuban) was far removed from contemporary historical reality. Instead it was based on an ideal conception of patria that had been a component of Cuban nationalism and art since the nineteenth century. The emphasis which Enríquez and Ponce placed on the themes of change, transformation, and death have had an enduring impact on Cuban art. Enríquez and Ponce represent two approaches to death: the first marked by exuberant flight and emotion; the second by moody contemplation. If Enríquez painted the delirium after the triumphed siege, Ponce painted the anteroom of grief.
The masters of the first generation of Cuban modernism set the stage for the prevalence of certain themes that would govern Cuban art after 1930, and which would have varying degrees of impact on those generations that would later emerge entirely in exile after 1960. Between 1934 and 1940, and still reeling from the overthrow of Machado, Cuba was searching for its cultural identity in its European and African roots. The landscape, flora, fauna, and lore of the island, as well as its peasants-the often neglected foundation of Cuba’s soul and economy-emerged in its art. Modern Cuban artists continue to do significant work in this tradition, including Juan Ramón Valdés Gómez
(called Yiki) and Jose Angel Toirac Batista.
in Cuba is José Rodríguez Fuster
, known as Fuster. Over the years Fuster has transformed the grey and poor suburb of Jaimanitas, Havana, into a magical dreamlike streetscape. He has drawn on his expertise as a ceramist to create a Gaudí-like environment that recalls that of the Barcelona artist and architect in his famous Parque Güell. There is the chess park, with giant boards and tables, houses individually decorated with ornate murals and domes, a riot of giant roosters, gauchos, Afro-Cuban religious figures installed by the entrance of many houses, a Fusterised theatre, public squares and a gigantic mural.
Manuel Mendive
is perhaps the single most important exponent of contemporary Afro-cubanismo in the visual arts, was born in 1944 into a Santería-practicing family. He graduated from the prestigious Academia de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro in Havana in 1962 with honors in sculpture and painting.
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
and the early part of the 20th century saw a growth in Cuban vanguardism
Vanguardism
In the context of revolutionary struggle, vanguardism is a strategy whereby an organization attempts to place itself at the center of the movement, and steer it in a direction consistent with its ideology....
movements, these movements were characterized by a mixture of modern artistic genres. Some of the more celebrated 20th century Cuban artists include Amelia Peláez
Amelia Peláez
Amelia Peláez del Casal was an important Cuban painter of the Avant-garde generation.-Biography:Amelia was born in 1896 in Yaguajay, in the former Cuban province of Las Villas...
(1896-1968), best known for a series of mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
projects and painter Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Lam
Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla , better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture...
(1902-1982) who created a highly personal version of modern primitivism
Primitivism
Primitivism is a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples, such as Paul Gauguin's inclusion of Tahitian motifs in paintings and ceramics...
.
More internationally known is the work of photographer Alberto Korda
Alberto Korda
Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, better known as Alberto Korda or simply Korda was a Cuban photographer, remembered for his famous image Guerrillero Heroico of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.-Early life:Korda, whose real name was Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez, was born on 14 September 1928 in...
, whose photographs following the early days of the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
included a picture of Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
which was to become one of the most recognizable images of 20th century. There is a flourishing street art
Street art
Street art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives...
movement influenced by Latin American artists José Guadalupe Posada
José Guadalupe Posada
Jose Guadalupe Posada: was a Mexican cartoonist illustrator and artist whose work has influenced many Latin American artists and cartoonists because of its satirical acuteness and political engagement....
and the muralist Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
In the late 19th century, landscapes dominated Cuban art and classicism was still the preferred genre.
The radical artistic movements that transformed European art in the first decades of the century arrived in Latin America in the 1920s to form part of a vigorous current of artistic, cultural, and social innovation.
By the late 1920s, the Vanguardia artists had rejected the academic conventions of Cuba's national art academy. In their formative years, many had lived in Paris, where they studied and absorbed the tenets of surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
, cubism
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
, and modernist primitivism. Modernism burst on the Cuban scene as part of the critical movement of national regeneration that arose in opposition to the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, American neo-colonial control and the consequent economic crisis. They returned to Cuba committed to new artistic innovation and keen to embrace the heritage of their island. These artists became increasingly political in their ideology, viewing the rural poor as symbols of national identity in contrast to the ruling elite of post independence Cuba. The vanguardia artists achieved international recognition in 2003 with the Modern Cuban Painting show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, subsequently showing in Paris.
Vanguard leader [Eduardo Abela] was typical of the movement, a painter who studied in Paris, Abela discovered his homeland Cuba from abroad apparently motivated by a combination of distance and nostalgia. On his return, Abela entered a highly productive period of work. His murals of Cuban life were complemented by cartoons which became social critiques of Cuban life under authoritarian president Gerardo Machado
Gerardo Machado
Gerardo Machado y Morales was President of Cuba and a general of the Cuban War of Independence...
.
After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cuban artists became more isolated from the anti-establishment artistic movements of the United States and Europe. Though artists continued to produce work in Cuba, many pursued their careers in exile.
While some artists felt it was in their best interests to leave Cuba and produce their art, some artists stayed behind, either happy or merely content to be creating art in Cuba, which was sponsored by the government. Because it was state sponsored, an implied censorship occurred, since artists wouldn’t want to make art that was against the revolutionary movement as that was the source of their funding. It was during the 1980s in which art began to reflect true uninfluenced expression. The “rebirth” of expression in Cuban art was greatly affected by the emergence of a new generation of Cuban. This generation did not remember the revolution directly, nor did they feel angst from having not been a larger part in forming the nation.
By the late 1970s many of the graduates of the school of the arts in Cuba, “the Facultad de Artes Plasticas of the Instituto Superior de Arte” (founded in 1976) were going to work as schoolteachers, teaching art to young Cubans across the island. This gave a platform for the graduates to be able to teach students about freedom of expression. This meant freedom of expression in many forms including medium, message, and style of art. It was this new level of experimentation and expression that was able to enable the movement of the 1980s.
Cubans saw the introduction of an art exhibit titled “Volumen Uno” in 1981, an exhibit that featured contemporary Cuban artists displaying their work in a series of one man exhibitions. Three years later, the introduction of the “Havana Bienal” assisted in the further progression of the liberation of art and free speech therein.
This age of artist was dedicated to people who were willing to take risks in their art and truly express themselves, rather than to express only things that supported the political movement. While looking at art of the 1980s we see a trend in use of the shape of Cuba itself as inspiration for art. One piece, Immediately Geographic by artist Florencio Gelabert Soto, is a sculpture in the shape of Cuba, but is broken into many pieces. One interpretation could reflect the still unequal treatment towards artists, and the repression they were under. A movement that mirrored this artistic piece was underway in which the shape of Cuba became a token in the artwork in a phase known as “tokenization.” This artwork often combined the shape of the island of Cuba with other attributes of the nation, such as the flag. By combining the various symbols of Cuba together the artists were proudly proclaiming ‘this is who we are’. Some art critics and historians however will argue that this was partially due to the isolated nature of the island, and that use of the island in artwork represented a feeling of being alone; as with all art, the intention of the artist can have many interpretations.
Vanguardia artists
Among the pioneers were Antonio GattornoAntonio Gattorno
Antonio Gattorno was the first Cuban artist of his generation to achieve an international reputation as a universal contemporary that transcended his ethnicity. He is one of the founders of Cuba's Modernist Movement, yet he is also one of the most underrated major painters of the 20th...
, whose oil The Siesta, represents the apogee of the Cuban-inspired painting and the starting point of the surrealist cycle, Eduardo Abela
Eduardo Abela
Eduardo Abela was a Cuban painter and comics artist. Born in San Antonio de los Baños, he studied at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, graduating in 1921. For the next decade he lived abroad, first in Spain and then in France...
, Fidelio Ponce de León
Fidelio Ponce de León
Fidelio Ponce de León was the pseudonym of Alfredo Fuentes Pons, a Cuban painter. A native of Camagüey, he studied at the San Alejandro Academy in Havana from 1913 until 1918...
, and Carlos Enríquez Gómez
Carlos Enríquez Gómez
Carlos Enríquez Gómez , was a Cuban painter, illustrator and writer of the Vanguardia movement . Along with Víctor Manuel, Amelia Peláez, Fidelio Ponce and Antonio Gattorno, and other masters of this period, he was involved in one of the most fertile moments in Cuban culture...
. Born around the turn of the century, these artists grew up in turmoil of constructing a new nation and reached maturity when Cubans engaged in discovering and inventing a national identity. They fully shared in the sense of confidence, renovation, and nationalism that characterized Cuban progressive intellectuals in the second quarter of the twentieth century.
Antonio Gattorno and Eduardo Abela were the earliest painters of their generation to adapt modern European and Mexican art to the interpretation of their Cuban subjects. They also found in the directness and idealization of early Renaissance painting an effective model for their expression of Cuban themes. These painters’ criollo images, for all their differences, shared a modern primitivism view of Cuba as an exotic, timeless, and rural inhabited land inhibited by simple and sensual, if also sad and melancholic people. Although rooted in Cuba’s natural and cultural environment, the vision of lo cubano (the Cuban) was far removed from contemporary historical reality. Instead it was based on an ideal conception of patria that had been a component of Cuban nationalism and art since the nineteenth century. The emphasis which Enríquez and Ponce placed on the themes of change, transformation, and death have had an enduring impact on Cuban art. Enríquez and Ponce represent two approaches to death: the first marked by exuberant flight and emotion; the second by moody contemplation. If Enríquez painted the delirium after the triumphed siege, Ponce painted the anteroom of grief.
The masters of the first generation of Cuban modernism set the stage for the prevalence of certain themes that would govern Cuban art after 1930, and which would have varying degrees of impact on those generations that would later emerge entirely in exile after 1960. Between 1934 and 1940, and still reeling from the overthrow of Machado, Cuba was searching for its cultural identity in its European and African roots. The landscape, flora, fauna, and lore of the island, as well as its peasants-the often neglected foundation of Cuba’s soul and economy-emerged in its art. Modern Cuban artists continue to do significant work in this tradition, including Juan Ramón Valdés Gómez
Juan Ramón Valdés Gómez
Juan Ramón Valdés Gómez, called "Yiki", is a modern Cuban artist whose paintings are representative of twentieth century Vanguardia artists who rejected the academic conventions of Cuba's national art academy...
(called Yiki) and Jose Angel Toirac Batista.
Naïve art
The foremost leader of Naïve artNaïve art
Naïve art is a classification of art that is often characterized by a childlike simplicity in its subject matter and technique. While many naïve artists appear, from their works, to have little or no formal art training, this is often not true...
in Cuba is José Rodríguez Fuster
José Rodríguez Fuster
José Rodríguez Fuster is a Cuban naïve artist specializing in ceramics, painting, drawing, engraving, and graphic design.-Career:From 1963 to he studied at the Escuela Nacional de Instructores de Arte in Havana...
, known as Fuster. Over the years Fuster has transformed the grey and poor suburb of Jaimanitas, Havana, into a magical dreamlike streetscape. He has drawn on his expertise as a ceramist to create a Gaudí-like environment that recalls that of the Barcelona artist and architect in his famous Parque Güell. There is the chess park, with giant boards and tables, houses individually decorated with ornate murals and domes, a riot of giant roosters, gauchos, Afro-Cuban religious figures installed by the entrance of many houses, a Fusterised theatre, public squares and a gigantic mural.
Manuel Mendive
Manuel Mendive
Manuel Mendive is one of the leading Afro-Cuban artists to emerge from the Revolutionary Period-Biography:Mendive was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1944. His family practiced La Regla de Ocha, or Santería. A mulatto, he cherishes his Yoruba roots from the West Coast of Africa...
is perhaps the single most important exponent of contemporary Afro-cubanismo in the visual arts, was born in 1944 into a Santería-practicing family. He graduated from the prestigious Academia de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro in Havana in 1962 with honors in sculpture and painting.
External links
- Contemporary Cuban Art Collection
- Contemporary Art from Cuba
- Contemporary Exiled Cuban Artist
- Cuban car art on the move BBC News
- Cuban poster collection, The Bancroft Library
- Cuban Art in Boston
- Soy Cuba Contemporary Art in UK
- Cuban Artist José Fuster Profiled by Reuters
- Gecko Arts and Media Making Colografia
- Pinturas Cubanas - Contemporary Cuban´s Artist