Cuba: Art and History from 1868 to Today by Nathalie Bondil (Editor), 2008 (NEW)

    Cuba: Art and History from 1868 to Today
by Nathalie Bondil (Editor), 2008

Hardcover, 424 pages
Published by Prestel Publishing

This sumptuous survey of Cuban art reveals the development of a distinct national identity and serves as an illustrated narrative of the country s colorful past and present.

Cuba s artistic tradition is as rich as its history, though its treasures are rarely appreciated outside of the country. This catalog, accompanying an exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, gathers paintings, drawings and photography from Cuba done over the past century and a half. In addition to hundreds of works on paper, it features revealing photographs some never before published that record the country s wars of independence and revolution, its utopian endeavours and social realities. Numerous essays explore aspects of the Cuban visual arts such as nineteenth-century landscapes and photojournalism, the burgeoning of the arte nuevo period, Wifredo Lam s seminal African-inspired images, the creation of the famed collective mural, Castro-era poster art and the emergence of a new generation of artists. This book chronicles a unique culture of synthesis, born at the crossroads of Europe, Africa and the Americas, and whose art bears witness to important historical events of the past 150 years.


Review by Nicholas Laughlin

First published in The Caribbean Review of Books, August 2008
On 10 October, 1868, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a wealthy landowner from eastern Cuba, assembled the slaves on his hacienda, told them they were now free, and made a proclamation that has come to be known as the Grito de Yara: a declaration of independence for Cuba. It was the start of the Ten Years War, the first of three wars against the Spanish colonial powers that finally ended, after yanqui intervention, in Cuban independence. In some versions of the narrative of nationhood, therefore, 1868 is the birth-year of modern Cuba. It is also the zero point for Cuba: Art and History from 1868 to Today, a major exhibition of Cuban art that ran at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from January to June 2008, and its massive eponymous catalogue.

Cuba is the indisputable heavyweight of the Caribbean art scene. One reason for (and also consequence of) this status is the strength of the countrys state-funded art institutions. Cuba: Art and History drew mostly on the collections of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (supplemented by loans from other museums and private collectors). Even in the era of Fidel Castros supposed retirement its impossible to imagine any US institution collaborating so intimately with Cubas art establishment. Canada has been a far friendlier trade and tourism partner, and its hard not to think of Cuba: Art and History as a lavish act of cultural diplomacy on the part of the Museum of Fine Arts. Far fewer people saw the show than if it had opened, say, in New York, but the gorgeous catalogue (which reproduces over four hundred works) offers the prospect of a long afterlife.