In a country as racially diverse as Cuba, it is surprising that Afro-Cuban art was not seen as desirable for a long time. After the revolution, Santeria and other African religious and cultural practices were considered primitive and counter-revolutionary. This was especially the case in the 1970s, during a period of severe censorship in all spheres of artistic and cultural life on the island.
In 1978, a group of artists rebelled against state censorship and formed an art collective under the name Grupo Antillano. Although the group was active for only five years, it helped establish Afro-Cuban art as part of the national identity. Most of the members of the group were painters – Adelaida Herrera Valdés, Julia Valdés, Manuel Mendive, Leonel Morales, Miguel Lobaina, Ever Fonseca, Clara Morera, Manuel Couceiro Prado, Arnaldo Rodríguez Larrinaga, Pablo Toscano Mora, Miguel Ocejo, and sculptors – Herminio Escalona Gonzales, Rogelio Rodríguez Cobas, Ramón Haiti, Rafael Queneditt Morales, Alberto Lescay Merencio, Oscar Rodríguez Lasseria, with Esteban Ayala Ferrer working mainly in graphic design. The main promoter of this collective of artists was Wilfredo Lam, a world-renowned painter of African and Chinese descent. Grupo Antillano’s first exhibition was held in September 1978 at the Galería Centro de Arte Internacional, and seven more will follow in the same year. Over the next four years, the group exhibited throughout Cuba and internationally. Shortly after Lam’s death in September 1982, Grupo Antillano ceased to exist as an artists’ collective and its last group exhibition was a Homage to Wilfredo Lam in September 1983.
A retrospective exhibition under the name “Drapetomanía: Grupo Antillano y el arte de Afro-Cuba”, curated by Harvard professor Alejandro de la Fuente, inaugurated in Santiago de Cuba in April 2013, continued in Havana in August of the same year. . in the spring of 2014 it will be on view in New York, in the fall of 2014 in San Francisco and in the spring of 2015 at Harvard University. In addition to showcasing the works of the original members of Grupo Antillano, the exhibition also includes works by a younger generation of artists who share the same concerns as the original members: issues of history, identity, and race. The group of contemporary artists invited to participate in this retrospective includes Belkis Ayón, José Bedia, Eduardo Roca Salazar (Choco), Juan Roberto Diago, Douglas Pérez, Elio Rodríguez Valdés, Alexis Esquivel, Andrés Montalván Cuéllar, Santiago Rodríguez Olazabal, René Peña , Marta María Pérez Bravo and Leandro Soto.
All of these artists – the original members of West Indian Group, as well as contemporary Afro-Cuban artists, are helping to promote this important aspect of Cuban national identity, in the visual arts and everyday life. Through their art, highly influenced by the African roots of many Cubans, they show us the essence of what is unique and constantly evolving. cubanity*.
* A concept that originated in the 1920s to explain the multicultural and multicolored people of Cuba.