New art of Cuba

the long version

In 1981, after several years of disappointment and reconceptualization, an exhibit called "Volumen I" featuring eleven young Cuban artists opened at the Centro de Arte Internacional in Havana. It was to be the symbolic and much mythologized birth of the new art in Cuba - although critics, not realizing that this was the first generation of artists shaped completely by the Cuban revolution, complained that the artists had abandoned their national identity and had been seduced by cosmopolitan ideals. Luis Camnitzer begins with this event in the first comprehensive look at the work of forty young Cuban artists, all working and educated after the 1959 revolution. He also examines the relationship among Cuban artists, the art world at large, and the Cuban government. Surprisingly, he finds that rather than being controlled by their relationship with the government, these artists produce works that both criticize and praise Castro and the revolution and provoke fierce social debate. Enriched by some 200 black-and-white illustrations of works never before seen in the United States, New Art of Cuba is a must for students of modern art, art history, and Cuban and Latin American studies.