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Spectacular Cuban Art Exhibition in Canada
On January 29th night this year, after a masterly lecture given by Moraima Clavijo Colom, director of the National Fine Arts Museum of Cuba, was opened the Exhibition : Cuba! Arte e Historia desde 1868 hasta nuestros dias (Cuba: Art and History from 1868 till Nowadays).
This is considered to be the largest and most important exhibit on Cuban Art out of the Island. It was presented at the Fine Arts Museum of Montreal, Canada, with the participation of distinguished figures like Sergio Velez Camhi, consul general of Cuba in that city; Jeff L. Rosenheim, curator of the photography department of the Metropolitan Museum of New York; Irina Leyva, curator of the Pan American Art Projects of Miami; John Tagg, professor of Art History and Literature at the Binghamton University of New York; Rafael Diaz, a New York gallery owner; Darrel Cotourrie, a gallery owner from Los Angeles and Gethim James, editor and owner of the Studio 203 art gallery in Toronto, among others intellectuals and art collectors. There were also artists from several countries.
Among the Cuban artists in the opening, there were Manuel Pina, Antonio Eligio Fernandez (Tonel), Roberto Salas and Ramon Cabrales, head of photography of the Cuban Ministry of Culture.
The Cuban delegation was completed with a team of curators, who took care of the pieces. Among them, Corina Matamoros, Roberto Cobas and Dr. Luz Merino, all from the Cuban National Museum, along with Rufino del Valle, from the Cuban Photographic Library, and its director Lourdes Socarras.
Other Cuban curators who contributed to the making of this exhibition were Hortensia Montero and Enrique Cardet, from the National Museum of Havana and the independent curator Iliana Cepero.
As the largest Cuban art exhibition abroad ever, it has allowed for the first time to discover the art of the Island throughout the history of the main issues of the 20th century -decolonization, pursuit of national identity, wars of independence and Revolution, political utopias under way, ideological confrontation between the East and the West and between the North and the South-, to the present day.
Located in the meeting point for the European, the Caribbean and the American world, Cuba is a land of culture: its music and its literature, of course, are well-known overseas, but in regards to plastic arts, things are a bit different.
Thanks to the exceptional support of the National Fine Arts Museum of Havana and the Cuban Photographic library together with the Photographic library of the Havana City Museum, the National Archives and FotoCreart, from the Cuban Ministry of Culture, and thanks to the contribution of many private or public collectors in the United States and Europe, this exhibition allows to gather, beyond any border, a detailed outlook of the Cuban art and its history.
The brilliant, esthetically composed showcase of this multidisciplinary exhibition gathers more than 400 important works never brought together before about the Island art.
The exhibition is divided into five big sections: Imagenes de Cuba a la busqueda de una expresion nacional (1868-1927);( means, Cuba Images in its search of national expression 1868-1927), Arte Nuevo, la vanguardia y recreacion de una identidad (1927-1938) , (means, New Art, the vanguard and recreation of an identity 1927-1938); Un estilo cubano: afirmacion y distribucion (1938-1959), (means, A Cuban Style: Affirmation and Distribution, 1938-1959); Con la Revolucion todo, contra la Revolucion nada (1959-1979), (means, With the Revolution everything, Against her, nothing, 1959-1979); and La Revolucion y yo: El individuo y la historia (1980-2007), (means, Revolution and Me: The Individual and the History).
The exhibition tells the Cuban history through the painting, the engraving and the photography since the 19th century, going through the artistic trends of the 30th century. Since the appearance of nationality, artists have been trying to define their identity, "la cubania", bearer of an ambition for its speech to become international. Between the reevaluation of our colonial past and the opening to avant-garde trends, the Cuban creators developed an art of synthesis profoundly original - baroque and academic heritage, Spanish and African roots, catholic and traditional spirituality, religious syncretism, mixing of races, etc.).
Very good artist like Victor Patricio Landaluce, Eduardo Laplante, Wilfredo Lam, Leopoldo Romanach, Armando Garcia Menocal, Jorge Arche, Fidelio Ponce de Leon, Amelia Pelaez, Carlos Enriquez, Eduardo Abela, Marcelo Pogolotti, Victor Manuel, Rene Portocarrero, Mariano Rodriguez, Antonia Eiriz, Ana Mendieta, Raul Martinez, Manuel Mendive, Antonio Gattorno, Kcho and many more stamped all of their works with cubania taken out of their deepest artistic talent.
The historic narration of the exhibition is supported by an important selection of photographs that goes from the unprecedented to the iconic. These pictures show chronologically the events recorded through the work of distinguished photographers who put on record the different stages of the Cuban country's development, in the social as well as in the political stage. It is within this plot that the great chapters of the history of the Cuban art are inserted, from the Wars of Independence in the 19th century to the uncertainties of the future.
Within the long list of the selected photographers there is Jose Gomez de la Carrera, Samuel Cohner, Manuel Martinez Otero, Walker Evans, Joaquin Blez, Armand, Narcy, Vicente Muniz, Ernesto Fernandez, Alberto and Luis Korda, Constantino Arias, Raul Corrales, Osvaldo Salas, Mario Garcia Joya (Mayito), Gory, Liborio Noval, Enrique de la Uz, Marta Maria Perez, Manuel Pina and Rene Pena, among others.
In the heart of the 20th century and the exhibition -with about twenty painting brought from Cuba and MOMA-, Wilfredo Lam's work embodies the synthesis and the ambition of a cultural mystification
Sometimes experienced as a driving force for collective political actions and some others like the expression of individuals facing history, the Cuban art el arte deals with the essential questions about the artist's role and place within society, questions that the brilliant contemporary school continues to outstandingly entangle.
Sculpture is also present, with works by Teodoro Ramos Blanco and artistic installments like Carlos Garaicoa's. There is also a big office with Carteles, Bohemir a few days during an event in Brazil, but this is considered to be the first time that is exhibited out of Cuba, due to the importance, the context and the period of time this mural will be exhibited.
This exhibition was the original idea of Nathalie Bondil, director of the Fine arts Museum of Montreal, who presented her project to the Cuban National Museum and Photographic Library in 2005. The Cuban institutions supported the idea from the beginning. Later, other Cuban institutions -abovementioned-, joined the project, along with other collectors like Vicki Gold-Levi, from New York and important museums and art galleries from Europe and North America, like MOMA and the Metropolitan, both from New York, and Couturier Gallery, from Los Angeles, among others.
Also headed by Nathalie Bondil was launched a 424 pages catalog book with around 450 full-colored pictures and almost 140 biographical notes about the artists represented in this exhibition. The historic essays in the book were written by Ernesto Cardet; Olga Lopez; Luz Merino; Ramon Vazquez; Liana Rios; Elsa Vega; Hortensia Montero; Corina Matamoros; Aylet Ojeda and Roberto Cobas, from the Fine Arts Museum of Havana; by Rufino del Valle, from the Cuban Photographic Library; the essayist Graziella Pogolotti; the Cuban expert Iliana Cepero; Antonio Eligio Fernandez (Tonel), critic, curator and Cuban artist from Vancouver; Nathalie Bondil and Stephane Aquin, director and curator respectively of the Fine Arts Museum of Montreal; the Cuban writer Ambrosio Fornet; Gerardo Mosquera, Cuban curator from the New Art Museum of New York; Rosa Lowinger, expert from Los Angeles; Timothy Barnard, film expert from Montreal; Gnter Schutz, literary critic from Paris and Jeff Rosenheim, curator from MOMA in New York. The deluxe book is considered to be the first one ever published gathering in a good synthesis the history of Cuban art in all its expressions (engraving, painting, photography, sculpture, cinema and video-art), and some people consider it already an important bibliographic gem for any collector or expert.
The works to be exhibited in Canada can be seen until June 8th of this year at the Fine Arts Museum of Montreal, 1380, rue Sherbrooke, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Cubarte News News posted on 6/9/2008 2:13:16 PM
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