Cuban art

Cuban art is an exceptionally diverse cultural blend of African, South American, European and North American design, reflecting the diverse demographic makeup of the island. Cuban artists embraced European modernism, and the early part of the 20th century saw a growth in Cuban vanguardism movements, which were characterized by the mixing 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.

In Centro Habana, a small neighborhood of artists have transformed the walls around them. October 2002

Better known internationally 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 the 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, a painter who studied in Paris, was typical of the movement. He 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.

Vanguardia artists

Pioneers were Antonio Gattorno, whose oil The Siesta, represents the apogee of the Cuban-inspired painting and the starting point of the surrealist cycle, Eduardo Abela, Víctor Manuel, 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.

Naïve art

According to European and North American Art critics, Naïve art is usually recognized by its childlike freshness and "amateurish" qualities, such as lack of accurate perspective, little or no modeling, and bold coloration. Artists who work in this style are generally acknowledged as favoring a more "primitive" or "folk" style of art. The term naïve itself can be problematic; usually meaning an artist is self-taught, it has been used in the past by academic artists or critics as a derogatory term, since naïve artists tend to ignore the basic rules of art. In spite of their disregard for academic conventions, naïve artists are often quite sophisticated in their personal forms of artistic expression.

The colors used in Cuban naïve art are especially vivid, with artists using the vibrant hues of their tropical home to present an idealized view of rural life, with spiritual references to Catholicism and Santeria's Orichas (deities), legends, and other aspects of Afro-Cuban culture, past and present. This naïve style of art portrays the typical Cuban worldview of the enjoyment of life despite its hardships

Although not well-known outside of Cuba, many naïve artists have banded together in the past in an attempt to gain national recognition for more "popular" forms of creativity. In the 1950s, American tourism in Cuba created a demand for folkloric and picturesque art, leading to increased production of what came to be known as "tourist art", most of which was classified as naïve. At the time, this art was seen as a "backward, barbaric, and crude form of expression that must be swept away". Regarded strictly as commercial decoration for tourists, it was often seen as being a byproduct of a "fossilized" belief system, rather than an authentic representation of a living culture. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, educational, cultural, and artistic activities were bolstered, with artists encouraged to attend the nation's free-access art schools (Escuelas Nacionales de Arte—now known as Instituto Superior de Arte). Even so, whether due to lack of proximity or disinterest in the world of academic painting, there remained a large number of self-taught Ingenuous or Spontaneous painters. Many of these artists joined together to form the Movement of Popular Artists in the early 1960s. Although this movement waned over the following decades, the artists themselves continued to paint.

Because of Cuban national pride in academic achievement and artistic training, in the early years after the Revolution it had been considered demeaning to be called a naïve artist. Since naïve artists were not generally recognized by the government as professional artists, they were not taken seriously by the arts community at large, and were at times harassed, their art sales being mistaken for illegal activity by the Cuban government. In the late 20th century, however, that attitude began to change.

In 1997, Sandra Levinson, executive director of the Center for Cuban Studies Art Space in New York City, organized Naïve Art in Cuba, a first-of-its-kind exhibition at the Metropolitan Arts Center featuring the art of fourteen Cuban naïve artists, in addition to the eight members of the Grupo Bayate artist's collective from Mella, Santiago de Cuba. These artists were discovered during a 1996 trip to Cuba by Levinson, Olga Hirshhorn, and others, who crisscrossed the island searching for examples of this style of art, of which so little had previously been seen in the United States

The unofficial head of Grupo Bayate is Luis Rodríguez Arias (born 1950), a baker by profession, who is known as el maestro to differentiate him from his son Luis Rodríguez Ricardo (born 1966), also an artist, who calls himself el estudiante. Both were represented in the Naïve Art from Cuba exhibition, which ran from September 11 to October 10, 1997.

El estudiante is among the most prominent Cuban Naïve painters. He began painting at eighteen years of age; the subject of his first painting was a girlfriend's home, which—in his own words—was "horrible". After serving in the army and working in construction, he was assigned to farm labor during Cuba's "special period". In those years he began to work with sculpture as a way to supplement his income, turning to painting a few years later. Like most naïve artists, he finds inspiration for his work in the experiences of his daily life: religious rituals and the events and people of his community. Having grown up in a neighborhood of mostly Haitian families, he is well aware of their struggles; he sometimes describes his work as "polemic".In January 1997, el estudiante held a one-man show in Santiago de Cuba's largest and most prestigious gallery, Oriente, and continues to take part in exhibitions held by Grupo Bayate. In June, 2002 his work was described as "riotously colorful and stacked like a rush-hour train" in a New York Times article entitled "Ebullient Cubans Make a Lot Out of a Little", which also speaks of the art-market success of his naïve style.

Another artist featured in the 1997 Metropolitan Arts Center Naïve Art from Cuba exhibition was Julián Espinoza Rebollido, also known as Wayacón. Born in 1931 (although his birth was not registered until 1941, making him "officially" 10 years younger than he actually is), Wayacón began painting as a child. Attending school only through the 3rd grade, this self-taught artist supported himself as a builder, auditing courses at the Cuban academy when he was older. In the 1950s he joined the Signos artists' group, and held his first exhibitions in Japan and Switzerland. Although an admirer of Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, and Pablo Picasso, his greatest inspirations come through observing the practice of the Santeria religion. Many of his paintings show its influence, containing vivid colors and religious imagery, with an almost hallucinogenic quality.

The foremost naïve artist in Cuba is José Rodríguez Fuster, known as Fuster. Over the years he has transformed the poor suburb of Jaimanitas, Havana, into a magical, dreamlike streetscape, drawing on his expertise as a ceramist to create an environment evocative of Antoni Gaudi's famed Park Güell in Barcelona. There is a 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 large mural.

The primitive-outsider art of Corso de Palenzuela (b. Havana, ca.1960), a self-taught painter of Sephardic ancestry, taps a rich lode of memory for its source material, depicted in a very personal Cuban landscape. Although he emigrated to the U.S. with his family at the age of eight, his colorfully vivid work places great emphasis on bringing out the rich cultural heritage of his native land.

Although not technically a naive artist, Manuel Mendive is perhaps the single most important exponent of contemporary Afro-Cubanismo in the visual arts. 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.

Few naïve artists have been represented in either Contemporary Art Salons or the Biennial of Havana. However, with growing interest in the genre, there are, as of 2015, increasing numbers of academic artists who have begun to paint in this style, with greater representation for all.

Contemporary Cuban art

"Contemporary art is an imprecise term [referring to art] that has been made fairly recently and which is considered 'of its time' in spirit". While generally agreed to cover the time period that follows World War II, in practice it is an elastic term that describes the myriad of art forms produced today. In Cuba, Contemporary Art includes painters who were active in the 1940s such as Wifredo Lam, Eduardo Abela and others strongly associated with earlier Cuban art movements. These influential artists can be seen as links bridging art from European Modernism, which contemporary Cuban artists vigorously reacted against in pursuit of genres more resonant with their own visions, to the diversity of today's Cuban art. These new artists emerged (and or reemerged) after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, a time period that coincides with the definition of 'contemporary art' as used by Christies, the famous auction house, and museums of contemporary art. Contemporary art includes Conceptual Art, Performance art, and the reconceptualization of traditional Afro-Cuban influences, particularly Santeria: an integral cultural element in the Cuban art scene.

Art in post-revolutionary Cuba

In the 1960s the aftermath of the Cuban revolution brought new restrictions, igniting an exodus of intellectuals and artists. The new régime required "a practice of culture as ideological propaganda, along with a stereotyped nationalism". Although government policies - driven by limited resources - did narrow artistic expression, they expanded, through education and subsidies, the number of people who could practice art, breaking down barriers through democratization and socialization. The increasing influence of the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s did impact Cuban culture, but Cuba did not match the U.S.S.R in the degree of artistic controls on exhibiting, publishing and employment.

Cubans remained intent on reinforcing a Cuban identity rooted in its own culture, as exemplified by the work of the art group Grupo Antillano. The simultaneous assimilation or synthesis of the tenets of modern western art and the development of Afro-Cuban art schools and movements created a new Cuban culture. Art proliferated under state programs of sponsorship and employment during this post-revolutionary period; the programs both politicized artistic content and inspired confidence in the people within the framework of Cuba's reinvented nationalism. Nelson Dominguez and Roberto Fabelo went from Abstraction and Neoexpressionism of the 1950s, to immortalizing the proletariat, farmers, workers and soldiers, while continuing to utilize many of the techniques they learned under the tutelage of Antonia Eiriz Vázquez. By combining nationalism with the politicization of art, artists maintained a level of freedom that continues to inspire innovation.

The new art

The 1960s and 1970s saw the introduction of conceptual art, shifting emphasis away from craftsmanship to ideas. This often meant the elimination of objects in art production; only ideas were stated or discussed. It required an enhanced level of participation by the patron (interactive participation or a set of instructions to follow). Conceptual art, Minimalism, Earth art, and Performance art mingled together to expand the very definition of "what art is".

In Cuba, these new developments were naturally synthesized through the Afro-Cuban sensibility and emerged as The New Art, an art movement widely recognized as distinctly Cuban. Young artists born after the revolution rebelled against modernism and embraced conceptual art, amongst other genres. Many would carry on folkloric traditions and Santeria motifs in their individual expressions while infusing their message with humor and mockery. The art took a qualitative leap by creating international-art structured on African views, not from the outside like surrealism but from the inside, alive with the cultural-spiritual complexities of their own existence.

The exhibition Volumen Uno, in 1981, wrenched open the doors for The New Art. Participants, many of whom were still in school, created a typical generational backlash by artists of the previous generation including Alberto Jorge Carol, Nelson Dominguez and César Leal, who went on the attack against the upstarts. The group, Volumen Uno - made up of Jose Bedia, Lucy Lippard, Ana Mendieta, Richardo Brey, Leandro Soto, Juan Francisco Elso, Flavio Garciandia, Gustavo Perez Monzon, Rubin Torres Llorea, Gory (Rogelio Lopez Marin), and Tomas Sanchez - presented a "fresh eclectic mix filtered through informalism, pop, minimalism, conceptualism, performance, graffiti and Arte Povera reconfigured and reactivated … to be critically, ethically, and organically Cuban".

By the middle of the 1980s another group of artists sought a more explicit political responsibility to "revive the mess", "revive the confusion", as Aldito Menendez incorporated into his 1988 installation. Accompanying Menéndez's installation was a note: "As you can see, this work is almost blank. I could only start it due to the lack of materials. Please help me." Here is the Cuban humor, the choteo, "perhaps the most quintessentially Cuban expression".

Laughter became the antidote of an anarchistic energy for and from the revolution; "one moment an aggressive undertow, then a jester's provocation, pressuring the tensions", wrote Rachel Weiss in To and from Utopia in the New Cuban Art. "The choteo is allergic to authority and prestige, the enemy of order in all its manifestations…civil disenchantment, the incredulous and mocking inner nature of the Cuban rises to the surface." The choteo, doing away with exactitude, tends to depict the extreme limits of an example. This sardonic Cuban humor has become as ubiquitous in Cuban art as the bright Caribbean colors of its palette. Eduardo Ponjuan, Glexis Novoa (of the ABTV group), Carlos Rodriguez Cardenas, and Rene Francisco are exemplars of this sensibility, mixing it with kitsch and harkening back in time while identifying with current Cuban attitudes, liberating art on the eve of the Cuban 'special period', in which the Soviet Union withdrew its financial aid.

In 1990 the Cuban government began programs to stimulate the tourist trade as a means of offsetting the loss of Soviet support. In 1992 the constitution was amended to allow and protect foreign-owned property, and in 1993 the dollar was permitted to circulate legally. In 1994 a cabinet-level department was created, the Ministry of Tourism, to further enhance tourism, which is Cuba's largest source of income. The initial reaction of the artists, as well as the general population, was withdrawal; "Withdrawal from the public to the private…from the collective to the individual…from the epic to the mundane…from satire to metaphor...Withdrawal from controversy…withdrawal from confrontation". But it was the withdrawal from conceptual to figurative art that defined the change in painting. Due in large measure to the interest of tourists, art took on higher visibility, as well as returning to a more figurative mode of expression. Art also worked as a space where Cubans debated some of the social problems magnified by the "Special Period", as illustrated by the Queloides art project, which deals with issues of race and discrimination.

"Every Cuban is an artist and every home is an art gallery," wrote Rachel Weiss in To and from Utopia in the New Cuban Art.

Political influences in Cuban art

"A question of major importance in Cuban culture is the link between radical political and artistic positions…where culture carries a marked social edge attuned to the circumstances in which it is produced and where it is forced to construct a national identity in the face of colonial and neo colonial powers."

In the 1980s, when the New Cuban Art Movement was consolidating, many still hoped to establish the Third World utopia of social justice promised by the Cuban revolution. While Cuba shares many characteristics with other Latin American countries three factors guarantee it a unique placement amongst the formerly colonized countries of the Americas:

• Spain continued emigration to Cuba in large numbers until the middle of the 20th century
• The native population was eliminated in the 17th century
• Cuba possesses the most varied cultural traditions of all the African diaspora in America

Religious influences in Cuban art

In addition to the Christian, predominately Catholic, there are four African Religions continuing to influence culture being practiced in Cuba: Santeria (Yoruba), Palo Monte (Kongo), Regla Arara (Ewe Fon), and the secret, male only, Abakua (Calabar). The African religions operate independently and synthesized with each other and the Christian religions (syncretism). These unique views of reality form a core of practices, beliefs, and customs that has shaped a cultural distinction labeled Afro-Cuban and known as the dominate force in Cuban art; a transracial, "hybridized, inventive, and influential in the construction of contemporary [Cuban] culture".

External links

• Wealth-Of-Art find contemporary artworks from emerging Cuban artists in London

• Contemporary Cuban Art Gallery in Miami from Luis Miguel Rodriguez
• Authentic Cuban Art
• 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
• http://www.andresborges.com/
• The Ediciones Vigía Collection From the Rare Book and Special Collection Division at the Library of Congress