Transforming attitude of the arts in Latin America/Cuba

The plastic arts in Cuba may, through their authors, be receiving and accepting the influences of the international artistic process; But, this in itself also today lacks the great strong force in terms of a displacing social movement. At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, Cuban plastic artists have shown their creative spirit to sustain the identity of their country. Beyond this artistic production, we do not see the realization of that energy that removes the consciousness of the masses who – whether they want it or not – aspire to reconstruct their social system.

Representative artists such as Leudys Barrenas Pérez, Omar Torres, Tomás Sánchez, Sheila Castellanos, Hanoi Jesús Nodarse, Damien Cruz, Radames Potrony, expose features containing realistic intensity, critical landscapes (scrubs, mangroves, forests, beauty of nature, contemplativity) in some and personalistic (memories, experiences, intimacy) in others; However, the representation of a newer vital world, more energetically influential in the vision of a new society on the part of its members, is missed.

From Cuba, from its plastic artists, today we demand that new, expressively renewing voice from a people who, in their historical imprint of the sixth decade of the 20th century, proposed actions of authentic transformation of the structures of the State, and, consequently, of its social and political reality. That voice will revolutionize from the visual and plastic arts, with Wilfredo Lam, as the exception, it is not yet heard by the Latin American people, as their poets and writers of that time were heard.

Omar Torres, Landscape, 2008