Arts and Literature of Cuba

of artistic ferment, thanks to a group of artists known collec- tively as the Vanguardia (“ vanguard ”). They were champions of modernism . Most of the early members of the Vanguardia had attended San Alejandro. But most had also lived or studied in Europe, particularly Paris. There they were exposed to various avant- garde art movements. When they returned to Cuba, they brought influences from those movements—especially cubism , surrealism , and modernist primitivism —with them. The Vanguardia included dozens of painters, and their work was quite diverse, both in style and in subject matter. Broadly speaking, however, the Vanguardia artists sought to marry modern art with Cuban themes. In a real sense, they were also exploring what it meant to be Cuban—a fascinating question, given that Cuba had been independent only for a few decades, after having been a Spanish colony for four centuries. Many members of the Vanguardia were concerned about social inequality, specifically the treatment of Cuba’s black or mixed- race people. There was also discontent with the country’s polit- ical development: the Vanguardia arrived during the corrupt dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, and even after his departure in 1933, Cuba would continue to suffer under terrible leaders. Some of the Vanguardia painters connected their artistic renunciation of the past with a larger project of modernizing and reforming Cuba as a whole. They took to heart the words of the radical critic Martí Casanovas, who in writing approv- ingly of the Vanguardia declared, “An artist must not turn his back on his society or on the problems and aspirations of his day.”

46

Arts and Literature of Cuba