¡Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

January 31 to June 8, 2008

¡Cuba! Art and History from 1868 to Today, brings together 400 works of art in the first showcase the art of this Caribbean island, which Christopher Columbus described as “the most beautiful land eyes have ever seen.”

This massive multidisciplinary exhibition draws a broad panorama of Cuban art and history. You will find about one hundred paintings, including a huge collective mural produced in 1967 by many artists, two hundred photographs and documents, approximately one hundred works on paper (in particular two collections of pre- and post-1959-Revolution posters), installations and videos, in addition to music and film excerpts.

Portrait of Mary, from the exhibition. Image: mbam.qc.ca

Located at the crossroads of Old Europe and the New World, Cuba is a rich cultural terrain: its music and literature are well known outside of the country, but the same cannot be said of its visual arts

The exhibition is divided into five sections:
-Depicting Cuba: Finding Ways to Express a Nation (1868-1927)
-Arte Nuevo: The Avant-garde and the Re-creation of Identity (1927-1938)
-Cubanness: Affirming a Cuban Style (1938-1959)
-Within the Revolution, Everything, Against the Revolution, Nothing (1959-1979)
-The Revolution and Me: The Individual Within History (1980-2007).

The Intellectual or The Young Intellectual, from the exhibition. Image: mbam.qc.ca

The exhibition’s historical narrative is told through a selection of significant photographs: from those that have never been shown to the iconic, these pictures illustrate the chronology of events as recorded by remarkable photographers. Cuban artists created a profoundly original art of synthesis (Baroque and academic legacies, Spanish and African roots, Catholic and traditional spirituality). Central to the century and the exhibition, with the presentation of twenty paintings, the landmark work of Wifredo Lam embodies this synthesis.

Wifredo Lam, The Jungle, 1943. Image: moma.ext.moma.org

For more information, please click HERE