Cuban art has been known since the 16th century.

In the 16th century, painters and sculptors began arriving from Europe. They made decorations (including paintings and sculptures), in Cuban churches and public buildings. By the mid-1700s, native-born artists were painting in Cuba, in the European tradition of painting.

Many works of art were left behind by José Nicolás de la Escalera (d. 1804). For many of those works, there is proof that he was the one who painted those.

Vicente Escobar (d. 1834) was a mestizo, and he did portraits that made his paintings popular with Cuba's elite (or people with wealth or political power). He opened [the first, or] one of the first painting workshop/studios in Cuba. He later graduated from the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid.

Víctor Patricio de Landaluze (d. 1889) was a Spanish-born artist, and he was an early artist of the costumbrismo genre. He was opposed to Cuban independence, and that cost him some of his popularity with the public.

After the Colonial Era

By the late 1920s [an Avant-garde movement,] the Vanguardia, had rejected convention [or some norms] of Cuba's national art academy. Most of the Vanguardia artists had been students at the national art academy. Many had lived in Paris (France), where they learned (more) about Surrealism, Cubism, and modernist Primitivism. Those genres (or styles) gave inspiration to the Vanguardia artists.

Pioneer s (or the first to be part) of the movement included Eduardo Abela, Antonio Gattorno, Victor Manuel, Fidelio Ponce de León, and Carlos Enríquez Gómez. Other famous artists of the original Vanguardia were Amelia Peláez, Jorge Arche, Marcelo Pogolotti, Aristides Fernandez, Rafael Blanco, Domingo Ravenet, Alberto Peña, and Lorenzo Romero Arciaga.

The painting ["the tropical gypsy",] La Gitana Tropical (1929), has been called one of the defining pieces (or paintings) of Cuban Avant-garde art. Victor Manuel painted it. During stays in Paris, he had been impressed by the works of Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. (The painting is in a museum in Havana, Cuba.)

Between 1934 and 1940, Cuba was searching for its cultural identity in its European and African roots. The landscape, flora, fauna, and lore of the island, as well as its peasants - the often neglected, but important part of Cuba's soul and economy - was shown, more and more, in its art.

In 1938, the Second National Salon of Painting and Sculpture, showed art works. Some of the artists there, have been called part of a second generation of modern artists, including Cundo Bermudez, Mario Carreño, Rita Longa, Alfredo Lozano, Luis Martinez-Pedro, and René Portocarrero

The painting The Jungle (1943) has been called a masterpiece (or a painting by a master) of Cuban art. The artist, Wifredo Lam, is not thought of, as being a part of the Vanguardia movement. (The painting is in a museum in the United States. It was bought in 1945.)

In 1944 in New York City (USA), the art exhibition "Modern Cuban Painters" was held at MoMA. That year Mario Carreño had a solo exhibition (or his own exhibition) at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

In 1951 in Paris (France), an exhibition of modern Cuban art was shown at the Musée National d'Art Moderne.

After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, some artists made a decision to leave Cuba. Because the creation of art, was sponsored (or paid for) by the Cuban government, implied censorship occurred, since artists wouldn't want to make art that was against the government that was financing (or paying for) the art.

In the 1960s and 1970s conceptual art was introduced. Minimalism, Earth art, and Performance art was (sometimes) mixed with conceptual art

In 1984 the first Havana Biennial was held. (There have been biennials as late as 2015 and 2019.)

In 1997 in New York City (USA), the exhibition Naïve Art in Cuba, was held at Metropolitan Arts Center. It showed  the art of fourteen Cuban artists of Naïve art, and art from eight members of the Grupo Bayate, an artists' collective (or group) from Mella, Santiago de Cuba. 

As of 2015, few artists of Naïve art have had works shown at art salons (or other exhibitions, such as) the biennial of Havana.

Gallery

Related pages
Tomás Sánchez (1948-)

References

Art
Cuban culture