IV. The Influence of “Modern Cuban Painters” on the Modern Cuban Painters

IV. The Influence of “Modern Cuban Painters” on the Modern Cuban Painters
The show was not a vehicle for Carreño alone, as is shown by María Luisa Gómez Mena’s correspondence with Barr in which she emphasizes the close knit nature of the particular “group” of artists that Barr visited. After Barr’s 1942 trip to Havana, María Luisa writes, “I see very little of the group, thanks to you, they have become hard workers, you stimulated them very much by liking and taking an interest in their work…” On March 18, 1944, María Luisa sent the following telegram, “The group of Cuban painters and myself are deeply grateful for your great help and thank you immensely for the Cuban exhibition.”

At the aforementioned 1945 MoMA conference Barr also says, “In Cuba there was until very recently almost no support, either from outside or from inside, for the artists who seem to us to be the most talented. Our “intervention” —to repeat a discredited word—was very minor: a brief visit, some genuine interest, a few purchases for little money. Yet this modest pump-priming seems to have destroyed apathy, aroused pride and interest, and helped produce what from here appears to be a kind of renaissance of Cuban painting supported by Cubans.”

In seeking to determine the range of influence and effects that “Modern Cuban Painters” and MoMA had on Cuban Modern art, one notices that there is a notable improvement in the quality of the work of these artists when one compares the works purchased by Barr on his visit and the works that these same artists, especially the younger artists, created in late 1942 and 1943 in anticipation of a group show at MoMA. To support this argument I would like to point out that although MoMA created an exhibit whose purpose was to illustrate their history of collecting Latin American Art and included only two of Barr’s Cuban purchases from the trip, Lam’s Satan and Amelia’s Card Game. The exhibition, “MoMA at El Museo,” (which was curated by Miriam Basilio, Gary Garrels, and Luis Enrique Pérez-Oramas from MoMA; and Fatima Bercht and Deborah Cullen from El Museo in 2004), was designed to illustrate MoMA’s long standing relationship with Latin American art, whose beginnings included their second monographic show, Diego Rivera (1931), and continue through today. To avoid seeming like a survey and to narrow the scope of the show, the catalog and wall text focused on MoMA’s Latin-American-art-collecting history and exhibited the works as reflections of collecting practices contemporaneous to the works exhibited. Though it seems that “Modern Cuban Painters,” from which works were apparently purchased by MoMA or given as gifts to the Museum would be a notable inclusion, works from the exhibit that are now in MoMA collection were excluded.

In an interview with Miriam Basilio, I asked why they excluded all but one of the Cuban paintings Barr collected and works that were bought for or by MoMA from “Modern Cuban Painters.” She explained, “There were space constraints and differences of opinion as always are with multiple curators. Some thought that the works represented what was being collected at the time. Others thought the works were not of the highest quality by today’s standards.” When one looks at the works that some of the painters went on to create after the 1942 visit, it seems that these works aren’t up the standards that the painters later had for themselves. This largely applies to the work of the younger generation. Peláez and Ponce, for example showed little change in their styles or intensity of production as a result of Barr’s visit. This makes sense as they were comparatively well-established artists already.

In some cases, especially in those of Cundo Bermudez and Felipe Orlando, the size of their canvases increased after Barr’s visit as well. This does not initially seem significant in itself, until we take into account the scarcity of funds that many of these artists contended with due to general post-depression poverty in Cuba, but more specifically due to a lack of support from collectors in their country. To embark on a larger work, meant a bigger investment on multiple levels and reflects that these artists were taking their painting more and more seriously.

The influence of Barr’s visit seems to have brought about the creation of more daring and bold works. Not only Barr’s enthusiasm as mentioned by María Luisa and Barr himself, but also the affirmation of the 1943 MoMA show was a source of serious encouragement for the young artists. For some of the artists these years were the springboard that propelled them into lifelong careers as relatively successful artists with varying degrees of development. In a relatively sparse realm of reproduction, and an even smaller pool of availability in the United States, one of the best sources for images of these artists’ work is in auction catalogues which allow us to see a wide range of works over the careers of these artists. Through these photographic records we can track changes in the artists’ styles and through the accompanying data we can follow the increase in value of their works in the Latin American art market. A few of these artists had extremely long careers. Bermudez’s style continued to evolve and he was painting well into the 1980s.