A tribute to Cuban draughtsman and essayist Jorge Rigol, with 50 drawings made from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Works by painter and draughtsman Adagio Benítez, National Arts Prize-Winner 2002, in which the architecture, the landscape and, especially, the female figure, the Cuban woman of today, are the protagonists of a colourful and imaginative universe.

Personal exhibit by young painter Roberto González with a deeply symbolic and introspective production. González is one of the most interesting figures of the most recent Cuban art.

Collective exhibition by artists from the gallery’s own collection, characterized by their quality and diversity, representative of the multiple trends of Cuban art.

Oil paintings, sculptures and drawings—one hundred and five works in all—by the famous Spanish singer-songwriter, Luis Eduardo Aute, the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work ever to be exhibited out of Spain. The humanism that is present in his musical compositions is also present in his art.

The first retrospective of the poet, narrator, folklorist and painter Samuel Feijóo includes oil and tempera paintings, watercolours, ink drawings and chalcography produced during a 40-year span from 1937 to 1977. According to its organizers, the exhibition is an approach to “the intimateness, the ornamental profusion and the baroque style that is present in [his] paintings.”

Yoel del Río exhibits metal sculptures assembled, mostly, from scrap materials. Both Christ and Don Quixote are present here, as well as invented objects and creatures from an imaginary animal life: a true feast of the imagination.

This collective exhibition by Cuban graphic designers is an excellent opportunity for approaching Cuban graphic design from the 1950s to the present day, its aesthetic and technical premises, points of greatest splendour during the mid 1960s, decline and recovery attempts.

An exhibition of works by Kamyl Bullaudy Rodríguez dedicated to the national heroe, José Martí, an ever-present topic of the artist.

Photo-collage by engraver, draughtsman and photographer Eduardo Hernández, who seeks to “reflect on the issue and sense of the word among us Cubans. The word in newspapers…in posters, etc. I believe that due to their mobilizing and social significance, many of them crowd out the will and individuality [of the people], which are also essential for the construction of a nation.”

Twenty-six outstanding Cuban painters, including Alicia Leal, Zaída del Río, Nelson Domínguez, Flora Fong, Ernesto García Peña and Carlos Fariñas, will exhibit works inspired by music, the theatre, ballet and contemporary dance.

Continuing a tradition that dates back to colonial times, in 1993 a group of young artists decided to organize these romerías with the arrival of Spring, which are presided over by the Hacha Taína (the Taino Axe) and the Cruz de Madera (the Wooden Cross), symbols of the mixture of elements that constitute the Cuban culture. Following this spirit, every year musicians, actors, researchers, artists, writers and dancers come together to share their artistic endeavour during intense days and nights in which the diversity of their propositions is exhibited. Under the slogan “There’s no today without yesterday”, the 15th edition of the Romerías de Mayo will be dedicated to the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico, and the city of Quito, in Ecuador.

Nothing to do with discotheques, this fair was begun in 1997 as a way to bring to national and international attention what the Cuban recording industry has been up to with concerts, recitals, symposia and exhibits. The 2008 festival, which is dedicated to África y su Diáspora, will start off with “the longest rumba in the world”.

The Latin American Theatre Festival, sponsored by Casa de las Americas in the 1960s, and which in 1964 went international, was discontinued until 1998 when the Drama Department of the Casa de las Americas organized the Theatre in May festival in its place. This is now a biannual affair. On this occasion, the festival will feature the performance of theatre companies from Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia and Puerto Rico, as well as Cuban companies such as Teatro de las Estaciones, Teatro de la Luna, Danza Contemporánea de Cuba, El Ciervo Encantado and a one-man show by Osvaldo Doimeadiós.

Founded in 1982 by internationally famous guitarist, composer and conductor Leo Brouwer as the Havana Guitar Competition and Festival, its characteristic has been the conceptual breadth of the projection of the instrument, thus finding room for classical, popular and folk music, as well as different instruments of the guitar family from a wide variety of cultures. The festival has welcomed distinguished guitarists, including Ichiro Suzuki from Japan, Costas Cotsiolis from Greece, Paco de Lucía from Spain, María Luisa Anido from Argentina, Francis Bebey from Cameroon, David Russell and John Williams from the UK, and Alirio Díaz from Venezuela, among others. After an hiatus of several years, the organizers have announced the renewal of the Festival to take place in May.

Organized by the Animation Studios of the Cuban Institute of Cinematic Art and Industry (ICAIC), this festival is dedicated to animated films for children and adolescents. The event includes a competition of short- and feature-length films produced for the cinema or television from 2006 to date, plus a program of workshops, theoretical meetings and exhibitions related to the making of films for young audiences.

The “Spanish Imprint Festival” is a festivity of music, art, lyric song, poetry and theatre, and is devoted to showing the Spanish cultural influence on Cuban culture—as well as the existence of living Spanish immigrants, their descendants and the associations founded by them—and the culture and customs of the Spanish provinces and communities.

Presided by musician and composer Juan Formell, director of the famous band Van Van, the festival has received confirmation of a number of international figures, including Simone from Brazil; Andy Montañez, Danny Rivera and Lucecita Benítez from Puerto Rico; Víctor Víctor and Sonia Silvestre from the Dominican Republic, Django and Massiel from Spain, as well as African bands who make Cuban dance music. From Cuba, participants include Van Van, Aragón, Omara Portuondo, Eliades Ochoa, Adalberto Álvarez y su Son, Manolito Simonet y su Trabuco, José María Vitier, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, Afrocuba, Orquesta Jorrín, Pancho Amat, Ernán López-Nussa and Carlos Varela, among others.

The International Digital Art exhibition was held for the first time in 1999 with the aim of offering “a space to exhibit and reflect upon” a new form of artistic creation which explores the potential that new technologies offer in creating art. It began with the participation of some thirty Cuban artists, eventually becoming a rendezvous for hundreds of digital artists, designers and photographers from dozens of countries, different ages and varied aesthetic views.

In commemoration of the birth of Las Tunas-born poet Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo (El Cucalambé), the most important Cuban decimista—country-ballad poet—of the 19th century, musicians, poets, repentistas (improvisers), researchers and folklorists get together in this unique festival to enjoy the songs and dances of Cuban country people. The event is presided over by the décima, a Spanish stanza of ten octosyllabic lines, created by the Spaniard Vicente Martínez Espinel (1551-1634), which in its journey to America was adopted by popular sectors of the population, especially by country folk, who have sung to it accompanied by string instruments such as the guitar and the lute.

Bolero, a musical genre which emerged in Cuba in the second half of the 19th century—the first printed notation of a bolero is Tristezas (1883), written by composer José Pepe Sánchez.—is what this festival is all about. This genre has had a marked influence in other countries of the area, including places as far away as Spain and Japan, and its first festival, held in Havana in 1987, is considered the oldest of its kind in Latin America. A Havana celebration in its beginnings, other provinces would become venues in later years given that bolero is one of the most loved and performed genres in the Island.