513Cuban Creatives and Modern Art
posted on July 19th, 2009
Cuban-style art is an assorted ethnical coalescence of European, North American and African aesthetic design mirroring the distinct demographic of the island. Cuban creatives espoused the European modernist movement and the 1920-1940 era witnessed an expansion in Cuban modernist trends; these movements were marked by a variety of modern artistic styles. Some of the more celebrated 20th century Cuban artists tended to come from the earlier part of the 20th century.
Perhaps the most noted artwork (of sorts) to be produced in the island of Cuba was THAT picture of Che Guevara (photo by Mr Alberto Korda) which went onto become arguably one of the most recognisable images of the 20th century.
The local Cuban art movement gained some pace after the opening of San Alejandro academy in 1818, which was constructed to fulfil the European predilection of the Cuban middle class. Towards the end of the 19th century, landscape paintings were very representative within the art movement of Cuba and classicalism was still the favoured genre.
Yet, the pioneering Cuban modern artists of the late 1920s had disapproved the theoretical conventions of the national art academy of Cuba. In their early years, many artists had lived in Paris, where they studied and took in the founding rules of surrealism, cubism, and modernist primitivism. They returned to Cuba dedicated to ground-breaking artistic methods and were keen to mix this new artistic persuasion with a Cuban twist. The pioneering artists attained international acclaim only as recently as 2003 when the MOMA displayed the the Modern Cuban Painting show.
