Arts and Literature of Cuba

The timing of that development wasn’t coincidental. In 1940, a new and highly progressive Cuban constitution was passed. The country entered a period of relative stability and democratic progress. But that wouldn’t last. The Rise and Fall of Abstractionism In 1952 Fulgencio Batista, the former chief of staff of the Cuban army and former president of Cuba, seized power in a coup. He ruled with an iron fist. During the Batista dictatorship, Cuba saw an explosion of abstract art. In its purest form, abstract art is completely non- representational. The artist uses shapes, forms, lines, and color without reference to any recognizable objects or scenes. But for many artists in Cuba during the 1950s, abstractionism became a signifier of opposition to the Batista regime—”a pictorial negation of the established order,” in the words of art histori- an David Craven, author of Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990 . Various groups of like-minded artists, following different schools of abstract art, formed in Cuba during the 1950s. Los Once (“the Eleven”) was a group that subscribed to abstract expressionism (a movement that originated in New York and that emphasized emotion and spontaneity). Its members included painters Guido Llinás (1923–2005) and Raúl Martínez (1927–1995), the sculptor Agustín Cárdenas (1927–2001), and the painter and sculptor Antonio Vidal (1928–2013). Another group, Los Diez (“the Ten”), champi- oned concretism, a style of painting emphasizing geometric shapes with sharply defined edges. Members of Los Diez

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