Cuban Art - Vanguardia Artists

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, 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.