Painting

Painting is the most true expression of fine arts on the island. A varied cultural blend of African, European, and North American visual design, it reflects the cultural variety of Cuba.

The first signs of creative expression came from aboriginal cave paintings. Unfortunately, when these communities vanished, the paintings discontinued. The Spanish conquest brought a religious form of painting, one connected to catholic liturgy. The colonial period saw foreign graphic artists and illustrators migrating to the island to depict the landscapes, customs, and memorable places in their artwork. National painting began to take spirit during the mid 19th century. Taste and the appreciation of painting developed in Cuba as the intellectual environment of the island was introduced to new influences. Commercialization of Cuban art was not set in motion until the 20th century. The artists of this period were dedicated to originality, while embracing the heritage of their island.

Today, Cuban artists are plentiful and flourishing in a mixture of past and future, all the while preserving the characteristics of Cuban individuality.

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One of Cuba’s supreme exemplar of naïf painting (a naive, simplistic, childlike style), Ruperto Jay Matamoros, passed away in Havana, 2007, just one month  before his 96th birthday. The National Plastic Arts laurate and National Visual Arts prize winner in 2000 was buried in his home town of San Luis, in eastern Santiago de Cuba.

Matamoros started creating on canvas at an early age with expressions of what he saw in the local landscape, the flora and fauna, and the people that lived in the countryside. However, it wasn’t until later in life when he finished his duties as a driver, plumber, gardener, messenger, and interior decorator, did his artistic talent truly blossom.

Among the shows that propelled him to fame were the exhibition of watercolors and sculptures shown at the Ministry of Justice and the prize he achieved at the National Museum of Fine Arts in 1964, the personal exhibition of his works at the Havana Gallery in 1965, and the successful emergence of his paintings at the 2nd Triennial of Naif Art in Bratislava and the Grenoble Biennial (France) in 1969.

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Music

Music is undeniably the most influential aspect of the personality of the Cuban people than all other expressions of art. It defines their spirit and makes the island unique. Music is instinctive to the Cubans who nurture its existence through improvisation. The island’s inhabitants speak in song and walk with rhythm. Cuban music’s primary roots began in Spain and West Africa, and have evolved through the centuries with the influences of various genres from countries such as France, Jamaica, and the United States. The indigenous rhythms have been significant in developing and maturing numerous musical styles in the 19th and 20th centuries — jazz, salsa, rumba, classical, bolero, tango, big band are just a few of the melodic beats. Son, “the sound,” is Cuba. Son comes from the heart of the mountains and is inspired by nature.

The late ’90s introduced a resurgence of Cuban rhythms worldwide. The Buena Vista Social Club is probably the most well known conveyer to the world of the charms of Cuba's beloved musical culture. 

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Tata Guines was Cuba’s most famous percussionist. Known as the “King of Congas”, he passed away this last year, 2007, in his native Cuba at age 77. During the 1950s, Guines played with Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie, but returned home after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. He was once quoted as saying, “Fame did not extend beyond the stage. Once you left the stage, it was like the signs said ‘Whites only’.”

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Israel Lopez, the legendary bassist and composer known as Cachao, has passed away at the age of 89. A modest and gentle man, his innovations broadened the musical parameters of the times by allowing his musicians to improvise freely and helped break down the aristocratic borders that once divided Cuban society. A musician whose sense of originality was so strong, he couldn’t help but advance Cuban music and leave it much better than when he began. Cuban exiles are characteristically ignored by the island’s official media as if they never existed, but the official newspaper, Granma, dedicated an article to Cachao’s passing. 

A child prodigy who began playing bass at age 9, Cachao was classically trained and became a member of the Havana Symphony at age 13, a position he held for 31 years. He performed with such composer/conductors as Igor Stravinsky, Mantovani, and fellow Cuban Ernesto Lecuona. With his older brother Orestes, a bassist, cellist, and pianist, he was also part of the string-and-flute charanga (Cuban dance music) orchestra, Arcaño y sus Maravillas. The brothers composed more than 2,500 danzónes (the official dance of Cuba). In the development, they updated the French-derived aristocratic parlor music by adding a closing section called “Mambo”, giving the pieces a looser, syncopated feel which eventually dancers fell in love with.

Cachao is featured on the Gloria Estefan album, “90 Millas,” and he is the subject of a new documentary, “Cachao: Una Mas” (Cachao: One More Song),” produced by San Francisco State University’s International Center for the Arts, premiering this year at the San Francisco International Film Festival. “I bring a certain grace to my music that I’ve obtained over the years,” Cachao said in a 2004 interview. He compared himself to a “cook who doesn't use measures anymore (and) begins by tossing in salt, a branch of this, a grain of that and comes up with a great dish." However, after it is all done he cannot tell you how he made it. "That’s the way it is with me. There are things that I do that I can’t measure. They just happen.”

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Ballet