46 / 80
Arts and Literature of Cuba
46
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.”