1. Cuban Art and National Identity
2. The Social and the Real
3. Cuba the Elusive Nation
4. Cuban Art and Identity
5. Carlos Enrîquez: The Painter of Cuban Ballads
6. Fidelio Ponce de León: A Cuban Original 7. Wifredo Lam 8. Guido Llinas and los Once After Cuba 9. Antonia Eiriz: Tribute to a Legend 10. Collecting Cuban Modern Art in Miami
5. Carlos Enrîquez: The Painter of Cuban Ballads
6. Fidelio Ponce de León: A Cuban Original 7. Wifredo Lam 8. Guido Llinas and los Once After Cuba 9. Antonia Eiriz: Tribute to a Legend 10. Collecting Cuban Modern Art in Miami
In the late 1920s, a group of young artists in Havana began to paint using non-traditional styles appropriated from European Modern Art. They were reacting against the various forms of naturalism promoted by Cuba’s art academy, San Alejandro, and in the process renovated Cuban art. The new direction(s) in art were then called by different names: arte nuevo, vanguardia, and moderno. Today, it is mostly known as modern.
Cuban art is often discussed in terms of generations, rather than movements, and the generations coincide with decades. Among the best-known artists of the 1930s, also known as the Vanguardia generation, are Eduardo Abela, Víctor Manuel García, Amelia Peláez, Antonio Gattorno, Fidelio Ponce de León, Arístides Fernández, Carlos Enríquez and Wifredo Lam. They tended to simplify forms and painted in more saturated colors than had been used in traditional Cuban art. These artists also reinvigorated certain “Cuban” themes, like the island’s landscape, peasants and their traditions, and AfroCuban culture, with sympathy for the working poor and the marginalized. For the first time in Cuban art, some of the artists of this generation painted images of social criticism.
The 1940s generation introduced bright coloration and elaborate forms, often labeled as neo-baroque. This approach to form, thought at the time to have a certain Cuban quality (compared to then Mexican or North American art), was used to represent everyday life with emphasis on the city of Havana. The outstanding artists of that generation are Mario Carreño, René Portocarrero, Mariano Rodríguez, Cundo Bermúdez, Roberto Diago, Mirta Cerra, and Luis Martínez Pedro. To be sure, the art of Peláez and Lam reached their full force in the 1940s, after developing strong personal styles already in the 1930s.
A new generation of artists emerged in the 1950s, some continued to work with figuration and the most avant-garde turned to abstraction, influenced by such a tendency in global Modern Art at mid-century. Among the better-known artists of the third-generation modernists are Agustín Cárdenas, Guido Llinás, Hugo Consuegra, Raúl Martínez, Tomás Oliva, Raúl Milián, Rafael Soriano, José María Mijares, Agustín Fernández, Loló Soldevilla, and Sandú Darie.
In the 1960s, painting was challenged by film, photography, and posters, art forms with potential to reach the masses as desired by the revolutionary government. Three major painters emerged during that decade, Antonia Eiriz, Angel Acosta León and Servando Cabrera Moreno, while Martinez transformed his style from abstract expressionism to an adaptation of Pop Art.
The selection of essays in this website were written over a period of thirty years and represent part of my writings on Cuban Modern Art. I wrote them while working as a professor of art history at Florida International University. I thank the Department of Art and Art History and The Cuban Research Institute at FIU for their support with my research. The essays include single chapters from two of my books, one on the first generation of Cuban modern artists and the other a monograph on Carlos Enríquez; book chapters from two publications of collected essays, one dedicated to social art and the other to Cuban culture; and various essays written for exhibition catalogues. I also included a recent testimonial on the practice of collecting Cuban Modern Art in Miami. It analyses the major role that Miami has played in the distribution, collection and preservation of Cuban Modern Art since the 1980s.