At the beginning of the XX century,
the European artists direct their attention to original
cultures: the exotic thing, the black thing, the infantile
thing, permean their works with their expressive resources,
creating implication axes that expand or they contract
in the art of the century. Artists like Vlaminck,
Matisse, Derain or Picasso would assist to the African
art and they would receive the influence of their
precise design, of their conceptual synthesis and
their formal economy in the process of symbiosis of
the foundations that contributed and validated the
emergence of the artistic vanguards of the XX century.
The presence of the different African black cultures
in the European continent in this period is hardly
anecdotic, it is bigger the relationship with the
cultures with Arab influence of África of the North.
The European relationship with the black África is
constituted fundamentally by art collections, for
the testimonies of trips, at the time that the presence
of African sub-Saharan in the Old Continent it is
insignificant.
In the environment of the American
continent the situation is different: at the beginning
of the XX century, America still conserves its characteristics
of the colonization, in spite of the fact that the
liberation process has culminated and the republics
are stabilized, these they continue the evolution
cultural turns to Europe, with the logical retard
of the media between both continents. An attitude
mediatizada that influences in the process of evolution
of the culture and the own identity, starting from
the dominant cultures.
To beginnings of the XX century
in Cuba, the influence of writers and brilliant intellectuals,
as José Jacinto Milanés, Nicolás Heredia, Julián of
the Casals; as well as of men of the intellectual
and military vigor like Loynaz, Carlos M. of Grasses,
Ignacio Agramonte, Calixto García, Maximum Gómez,
José Martí; it has laid the foundation concepts of
identity and national culture. As for the plastic
arts, the Academy of fine arts of San Alejandro in
Havana valorizes the academic painting, of court realist,
and at the same time it endows from technical knowledge
to the generations of artists that will contribute
to the development of the plastic arts of this century
in Cuba, questioning the imparted academicism and
assisting to the European vanguards: and that they
would constitute the creative nucleus of the literature
and the Cuban art. Coinciding with the end of the
War of Independence and the beginning of the republican
period, in the decade of the years ' 20 several intellectuals
unite in the defense of a national identity. Among
these intellectuals of vanguard, rooted in the Grupo
Minorista, Emilio Roig of Leuchsenring were, Fernando
Ortiz, Rubén Martínez Villena, I Move away Carpentier,
José Manuel Acosta, José Zacarías Tallet, Regino Pedroso,
Nicolás Guillén, Amadeo Roldán, Jorge Mañach and others.
The Grupo Minorista is founded in 1927 The Magazine
of Advance that would have a decisive importance in
the development of the plastic arts in Cuba and it
propitiates the knowledge of Nicolás Guillén's poetry
and the force of Wifredo Lam's visual universe. The
Magazine of Advance promoted the first exhibition
of modern art of Cuba and it contributed to the diffusion
of literary and artistic works.
In this identification process
and rescue of the features of our cultural identity,
the valuation of the contribution of the resistance
cultures or marginal, it is fundamental. The relating
one Afro-Cuban (3) it will be in the creative sources
of any Cuban artist:
the cult
of the Orichas (yoruba) it contributes the influence
of the consecration wardrobe, the belts, the crowns
and the cloths. The wardrobes are elaborations
of high seam to the European usage of the XVII century
and they are only used during saint's coronation or
initiation of the iyawó; the cloths are good to cover
the foundation of the sacred one and he/she only covers
with them to a person while the same one is possessed
by the oricha, since in this case the oricha has abandoned
its vessel to settle in the devote one. The
altars, as well as the bills in the elaboration
of necklaces and cloths with snails are another Afro-Cuban
artistic manifestation.
We also find a great variety in
the ritual craft; from the tools of Changó (Obákoso
and Oggoddó ma kulenkue) until the feather dusters
of horse tail. In Palo Monte(Bantu) especially in the Brillumba that prevails
in Matanzas, we also find an enormous source of visual
inspiration, from the talismen of Mayombe until the
vititi mensu (magic mirror).
The graph of the signatures of ritual
invocation characteristic of Stick Mounts and the
religiosity Abakuá (carabalí)
appears in the work of numerous Cuban artists and
matanceros. In the work
of art , explicit references can exist, abstractions,
subtractions or deconstrucciones of a poetic one of
the Afro-Cuban plastic codes that it allows the evident
or tangential recognition, that recognition that distinguishes
the cadence in the music, the rhythm of the speech
in the literature or the gestualidad captured by the
Cuban School of Ballet, those references that syntonize
a comprehensive identity.
(3) I subscribe
the reasoning applied to the Cuban religiosity by
Jesús Guanche and Gertudis Campo in their work titled
Craft and popular religiosity in the Cuban santería:
the sun, the arch and the arrow,
the pottery of use ritual", as for precision and utility
of the term transculturación regarding the Afro-Cuban
term. Only here I should use Afro-Cuban because he/she
requires to be distinguished a sector of cultural
contribution differentiating it regarding others of
Spanish origin, Englishman, Chinese, etc.
