Cuban Art At Montreal Museum

Discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and colonized by the Spanish from 1511 on, the island of Cuba did not gain its independence until the early twentieth century. Since that time, it has been embroiled in the most vital political issues.

Although the main events of its political history and some aspects of its culture are familiar to the general public, its visual art is still relatively unknown abroad. No exhibition of this magnitude has ever been presented before. The show will cover the development of Cubanidad, the Cuban identity,as revealed in the visual arts from the second War of Independence to the present day through some 350 works – paintings, sculpture, photographs, installations and videos – together with music and films.

These works demonstrate the birth of a specifically Cuban view of the island's landscape and society in the early twentieth century and the growth of new and challenging avant-garde movements in the 1930s and 1940s. Then, after the Revolution of 1959 led by Fidel Castro, there emerged Pop Art and propagandist art, together with a blossoming graphics tradition. Since the 1980s, contemporary Cuban art has been taking a more critical position, especially in regard to the pro-Soviet era and the historical situation of this "island paradise."

The exhibition is organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts with the support of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes of Havana and of many Cuban and American lenders, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Arizona State University Art Museum in Phoenix, the two museums with the largest holdings of Cuban art outside Cuba. -- www.mmfa.qc.ca