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Painting and Sculpture 55
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