Welcome to the Cuban Art Space of the Center for Cuban Studies! Cuban art is still very little known in the United States, especially that made by artists still living and working in Cuba.

 

The Cuban Art Space project to collect art, photographs and posters from Cuba was born with the Center, but it was not until 1999 that a public gallery space opened as part of the Center.

 

Its goal is to promote the work of Cuban artists, especially those still living and working in Cuba, and to educate the U.S. public about Cuba’s cultural life.

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José Fuster
Los Cubanos

June 5 - July 11, 2009

 

José Fuster

José Rodríguez Fuster was born in Villa Clara in 1946. He paints, engraves and sketches and is also one of Cuba's most original ceramists. He began his artistic career in 1961 at the age of 14, when he went to the Sierra Maestra to teach in the Literacy Campaign. He studied at the Art Instructors School from 1963 to 1965. He then started working as a ceramist at the Cubanacán Ceramics Workshop in Havana in 1966. He has participated in contests, exhibits, and art symposia in Cuba and around the world. In August, 1996, in honor of his 50th birthday, the National Fine Arts Museum opened a major exhibit of his ceramics, tiles, drawings and paintings in the Castillo de la Fuerza museum in Havana.

 

His home studio in Jaimanitas, just outside of Havana, is known throughout the world. What started as an experiment in his own home -- adding ceramic tiles to every wall, filling the small lawn in front of his tiny home with ceramic palm trees, a huge table under a ceramic roof, a sculpture dedicated to anti-machismo, adding two more stories to the home and filling those with sculpture, ceramics and wall paintings -- has extended to dozens of buildings within the town. He started with the community's "medico de la familia" (family doctor) residence, in 2001 - you can see it here - and then began painting and adding ceramics to every home willing to accept his art. Most recently he unveiled a monument to the five Cubans who have been in prison in the United States for ten years. Considered political prisoners (they infiltrated right wing Cuban exile groups and reported on their planned terrorist activities), the "Cuban Five" have received worldwide support, but probably no single gesture has been more imaginative than Fuster's. The monument can be seen at Fuster's own web site.

 

Fuster is the subject of a recent Reuters profile that documents his work in turning his seaside home village of Jaimanitas into a living work of art. The ongoing project has made of Jaimanitas a must-see destination for visitors to Cuba. For the full profile by Jeff Franks, which includes numerous photographs of his work in Jaimanitas click here.

 

The Cuban Art Space will also be screening various documentary videos made about Fuster's work during the exhibit.

 

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231 West 29th Street 4 Fl | New York NY 10001 | 212.242.0559 | cubanartspace@gmail.com