The Cuban Artistic Avant-Garde in Democracy

Alejandro Anreus presents his book on the Cuban artistic avant-garde in democracy in Miami

Alejandro Anreus's first year in exile in New Jersey brought him a lot of cold. A cold that had nothing to do with his Caribbean island and the colors of the Tropics, which distinguish a large part of the works of the Cuban avant-garde, on which he is an expert as the author of several books on Latin American art. If Colonel Aureliano Buendía came to experience ice at the beginning of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Anreus (Havana, 1960) came to experience the cold, but also the generosity of strangers and the composure of his Cuban grandmother on a trip to a village market in New Jersey to buy chickens to cook for Christmas dinner. In her story "Chickens on the Bus" (Aztlan, Spring 2007), Anreus recounts that she wanted them alive, and indeed, she got them that way, even with a 75-cent discount the vendor gave her when they saw they were short on money. The problem arose when they boarded the bus, and another passenger discovered the two live chickens sticking their heads out of the bag. She complained, and the driver had no choice but to ask 12-year-old Anreus and his grandmother to get off. I won't recount what happened next because I want you to go read the story. But it serves to prove that Anreus's ability to turn a memoir like this into literature prepared him for writing books like "Modern Art in 1940s Cuba." Havana's Artists, Critics and Exhibitions (University of Florida Press, 2025), which will be presented on October 16 and 17 at the Cernuda Arte gallery in Coral Gables. His early exposure to the arts also contributes to his exceptional work as a critic, particularly to the play rehearsals he saw in Havana as a child with his aunts, actresses Gladys and Idalia Anreus. The latter, who died in 1998, co-starred in some of Cuba's most important films, including Lucía (1968); Los días del agua (1971); and Ustedes tiene la palabra (1973). “My homeland is spiritual, not physical,” Anreus says when asked if she will return to Cuba. “It's our literature, our art, our music (the old trova, not the new one!). And it's the memory of my mother, who was a modest factory worker in exile, and who never wanted to return. And she outlived Fidel [Castro] by a few months.”

With the rigor of an academic—he is a professor emeritus of art history and Latin American studies at William Paterson University in New Jersey—and with an entertaining prose that leaves us wanting to know more about the first two generations of Cuban artists, Anreus delves into the artistic and cultural history of Cuba in the 1940s. After the 1933 revolution that overthrew Gerardo Machado—a general from the War of Independence turned tyrant—and a period of unstable leadership, came the Authentic Party governments of Ramón Grau San Martín (1933–1934, 1944–1948) and Carlos Prío Socarrás (1948–1952). Under democracy—imperfect and plagued by corruption—painting, sculpture, and literature flourished. The generation of intellectuals around José Lezama Lima and the magazine Orígenes (1944-1956) supported art exhibitions with texts and reviews and offered spaces for artists to illustrate their pages. The great figures of the Cuban avant-garde—Víctor Manuel, Wifredo Lam, Amelia Peláez, Carlos Enríquez, Fidelio Ponce, Mario Carreño, Mariano Rodríguez, René Portocarrero, Luis Martínez Pedro, and Roberto Diago—are present, along with other lesser-known artists, whom Anreus also includes in detail. Sculptors, sometimes overlooked by other critics, stand out: Juan José Sicre, Alfredo Lozano, Teodoro Ramos Blanco, and younger artists with brilliant careers, such as Roberto Estopiñán.

Read more