THE countries of Latin America and the Caribbean possess a rich and diverse cultural heritage of great value, which incorporates the respected legacies of antiquity, left by the original civilisations.
Cuba is the largest island republic in the West Indies, situated at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico.
Cuba was destined to be at all times, a port of call, a transit passage, a trading hub, a fusion of peoples and cultures and a centre of cultural exchange.
Various cultures from Native Cuban to Latino, Spanish, including African, inhabit Cuba and have made a significant impact on the international art world.
The earliest evidence of the presence of human beings on the island dates back to more than 5 000 years before the discovery of America. The name ‘Cuba’ is an abbreviation of the indigenous Mesoamerican word ‘cubabacán”. Its official language is Spanish and its capital is Havana.
Cuba was a country dominated, first by colonialism and later by imperialism. It became a Spanish colony, following its colonial discovery by Italian explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. Large numbers of slaves were brought to Cuba to work on the large plantations, especially sugar and tobacco, so that by 1862, the African population was larger than that of the white population. Afro-Cuban art, religion and music began to flourish and resulted in the Cuban cultural movement ‘Afro-Cubanismo’.
The island gained its independence after the Spanish-American War of 1898. However, the Island remained subject to American influence until declared a People’s Republic, under Fidel Castro, in 1960. Cuba, however, became the subject of an international crisis in 1962 when the United States blockaded the island in order to compel the Soviet Union to dismantle its nuclear missile base in Cuba.
Cuba’s history today can be divided into five distinctive periods: pre-colonial (prior to 1492), Spanish Colonial (1492-1902), Cuban Republic (1902-1958), pre-Soviet Bloc collapse (1959-1989) and post-Soviet Bloc collapse (1989), both the latter under the leadership of Fidel Castro.
Under the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, the state guides, fosters and promotes education, art and culture and the sciences in all their forms, allowing freedom of artistic creation provided that its content is not inconsistent with the Revolution. The cultural policy of Cuba embraces the fundamental rights and freedoms of the people.
Cuban painters, sculptors, ceramic artists, engravers, draughtsmen, designers and photographers have been practising, providing and exhibiting their culturally valuable talent for many years. Today, Cuban artists’, using a variety of artistic idioms and artistic expressions, focus their attention on the richness of their national tradition to give expression to the new realities.
Art forms such as engraving and pottery, which suffered almost total neglect under colonialism, before the Revolution, are now widely practised by a number of visual art workshop-schools. In the disciplines of painting and drawing, established artists have added to their opus, while new ventures are promoting work of outstanding quality.
In Cuba, in the visual arts, the disciplines of graphic art and design have reached sophisticated levels and achieved international recognition. In conformity with the principle that beauty should be consistently expressed in every aspect of daily life, their detailed, precisionist draughtsmanship is applied with the same commitment to aesthetic values and principles to billboards, advertisement posters, literary manuscripts, periodicals and other publications, record cover sleeves, commercial packaging, textile design and murals .
As early as 1961, Cuba set up a network of 25 art galleries located in special buildings and Government houses. During the first decade since the Revolution, an estimated 900 000 visitors viewed the art galleries annually.
While Cuba had six museums in 1958, today there are 59 museums located in 12 of the 14 provinces, divided into the following categories and specialised subjects: six general museums; 40 specialised museums; 24 history museums; six art museums; 10 science museums and 13 state memorials.
The art galleries and exhibition halls in the capital city of Havana host exhibitions from other countries, many of which also tour the provinces. Each year, national Art exhibitions of new work are held and provide an opportunity for comparing the different branches of the plastic arts and encouraging creativity and employment for people in the creative fields.
A major feature of Cuban cultural life, and a fruit of the internationalist spirit of the Revolution, is the practice of arranging foreign exhibitions of works by Cuban artists. Conversely, many countries have made it possible for the Cuban people to enjoy, for the first time in its history, works of art pertaining to the cultures of those countries.
Cuba is a host to the world famous Havana Art Biennales. A few Zimbabwean artists, Berry Bickle, Chaz Maviyane-Davis, Nicholas Mukomberanwa, Tapfuma Gutsa and this art critic have attended this prestigious Biennale.
Despite the fact that imperial forces in Cuba tried all means to uproot Cuba’s cultural values, (as the Colonials did in Zimbabwe), the expressions of artistic culture, which emerged with certain specific historical or social peculiarities, after Castro’s revolution, possess a distinctive Cuban national character that was acquired during the course of centuries of art and cultural development, through the Consejo Nacional de Cultura (National Cultural Council) that was established as early as 1961 in Cuba, as the Government body principally responsible for cultural activities.
Some of Cuba’s most prominent artists include Eduardo Abela (1891-1965), Victor Manuel García (1897-1969) and Wifredo Lam (1902-1982), whose semi-abstract images of personages, animals and vegetation are depicted in a metamorphosis similar to the mythological-based Shona art of the late 1950s to the late l980s. Lam’s work, ‘Large Jungle’ of 1943, is a pride of Cuba, now housed in MoMa, the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
For Castro, the revolutionary victory of 1958/9 gave a defined meaning to the character of Cuban art, culture and nationhood. Art and aesthetic training was considered an indispensable part of the formation of the Cuban personality; hence the introduction of specialised art education in Cuba today is provided from primary school level to create artistically sensitive adult citizens.
The greatest asset of a country engaged in re-building its society is the people. However, national art and cultural development was inconceivable to President Castro without the active participation of the workers, peasants and students as well as the schoolchildren and adolescents in particular.
In the words of Castro, ‘the great creator’: “… One of the great successes of the Cuban Revolution has been the transformation of the oppressed, hungry and illiterate masses into a people with access to art and culture.”
Cuban culture, its art, music, dance and literature are an integral aspect of nationhood and is nourished by the roots from which the Cuban nation has sprung.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, lecturer, musician, art critic, practicing artist and corporate image consultant. He is also a specialist Art Consultant, Post-Colonial Scholar, Zimbabwean Socio-Economic analyst and researcher. E-mail: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com