Evolution within the Revolution: The Afro-Cuban Cultural Movement and Cuban Art Collectives, 1975 to 2000

During the twentieth century, two movements in Cuban art played a critical role in creating an expanded space for societal debate and cultural expression: the artistic avant-garde and the Afro-Cuban movement. Initially flourishing in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these collective efforts took on new forms in the changed environment after 1959. After the Revolution, conditions for cultural production changed with the official position that art should serve ideological functions, but both avant-garde and Afro-Cuban production continued, at the risk of conflict with the state. In the face of a restrictive state that sought to control such expressions, the Afro-Cuban movement and avant-garde art collectives developed along parallel, and sometimes intersecting, lines.