Cuba: A History in Art

The history of fine art in Cuba began in the colonial period and exploded onto the international scene near the end of World War II with a ground-breaking show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Now available in a revised edition, Cuba: A History in Art offers one of the most comprehensive surveys of Cuban art available anywhere.

Featuring highlights from the Cuban Foundation Collection on permanent exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Science, Daytona Beach, this volume includes landscapes, still life’s, portraits, genre and abstract works by the most important Cuban painters active between 1725 and 1959.In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these masters developed a unique tropical style based on European prototypes. After the First World War, Cuba exploded with a new vision, full of the colour and rhythms of a sophisticated modernism.

Essays by renowned art historians Gary Libby and Juan Martinez provide an aesthetic, historical, social, and cultural overview of Cuban art in general and these masterpieces in particular. Particularly interesting is the explanation of the convergence of forces early in the twentieth century that made Havana and Cuba a centre of modernism.

A concise overview of a magnificent artistic tradition, this volume is a must-have addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in how the Americas influenced the history of art.