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Painting
and Sculpture
U
p until the first decades of the 20th century, Cuban
painting was dominated by the conventions of aca-
demic art. Cuba had its own national academy of fine
arts—the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, known popularly
as Academia San Alejandro. Founded in 1818 by a French
painter, San Alejandro drew inspiration from the venerable
national arts academies of Europe. Like those institutions, San
Alejandro sought to instruct the most promising students in
the techniques of drawing and painting. And, like Europe’s
national arts academies, it effectively functioned as an arbiter
of what constituted the best art, and who was considered a
serious artist.
The highest art was assumed to be academic art—that is,
art that followed the conventions taught at the academy.
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