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Cuban art of the turn-of-the-century was conservative and academic. The
Academia de San Alejandro produced very competent artists who mirrored the
styles and subjects of artists abroad. Themes such as the life of the
Cuban "guajiros" (country people) or the urban poor were rarely, if ever,
depicted. Those artists who came to maturity by the late 1920s, considered
the Vanguard generation, developed a repertory that departed dramatically
in both subject matter and style from the norms of Cuban visual
expression. These "Vanguardia" artists - usually separated into two
generations - are among the most inventive and interesting figures in
Latin American art of the first half of the 20th century. They sought to
establish a national identity in art - incorporating elements of the
international avant-garde (Cubism, Expressionism etc) into themes that
were distinctly Cuban. Painters such as Victor Manuel Garcia,
Eduardo
Abela, Carlos Enriquez and others established a new mode of vision for
Cuban art after c.1927. The so-called second generation of the Cuban
vanguard included artists such as Amelia
Pelaez and Wifredo Lam. These 2
artists are internationally known as the most representative figures of
the great experiments in Cuban art from the 1930s to the 60s. Both
Pelaez
and Lam spent long periods of time in Europe.
Pelaez studied in Paris
with
Russian constructivist Alexandra Exter. Like other artists examined in
this course, she assimilated the example of European modernism and
created, once she returned to Havana, an art that had a distinctly Cuban
cast, while retaining its international and "modern" underpinnings. Lam
worked in both Spain and Paris, where he became a good friend of
Picasso. From the 1940s onward he created a highly original form of art
that blended Cubism with Surrealism, treating themes of Afro-Cuban
religious reference
(santeria) and setting the stage for the further
experiments in the Cuban visual arts that would take place after the
triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
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