Cuba: A History in Art

Magazine Antiques, March, 1998 by Alfred Mayor

From 1933 until 1959, when he was forced to flee Cuba, General Fulgencio Batista y Zaldivar was the power behind Cuban politics, and off and on the president of the country. During the winter he would often take a vacation in Daytona Beach, Florida, which he evidently enjoyed, since in 1957 he and his wife, Marta, gave the city their collection of Cuban art. This consisted of twenty-seven major paintings, forty-five ceramic objects, as well as furniture. The gift was made under the auspices of the Cuban Foundation, which Batista had established for this purpose. The collection forms the nucleus of the excellent holdings of Cuban art in the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach.

A selection of the paintings in the museum's collection, many of them part of the Batista gift, is the subject of Cuba: A History in Art, which includes informative essays detailing the rise of a Cuban style of painting and Cuban painting of the republican period, from 1902, when a brief period of American military rule ended, to 1959, when Fidel Castro assumed power. There is also a brief review of photography in Cuba. In the catalogue section, which is chronologically arranged by the artists' dates, each illustration is accompanied by an account of the artist's life and work and an appraisal of the merits of the painting.