Over 50 pictures by 21 Cuban photographers (Liborio Noval, Ernesto Fernández, Roberto Salas, Enrique de la Uz, Ramón Martínez Grandal, Mario Díaz, Humberto Mayol, Juan Carlos Alom, among others) with different aesthetic inclinations and premises, from different generations, connected by a common topic: “the atmospheres that seek to go beyond the boundaries of time and space,” in the words of its curator and gallery director, painter Lesbia Vent Dumois.

The painter Arturo Montoto, one of the most important contemporary Cuban artists, has decided to exhibit his work at a gallery located in the outskirts of Havana, one which is not usually patronized by celebrities, or the media, for that matter. But it’s worth taking the long trek to Guanabacoa to enjoy the painter’s “still lifes” in disquieting atmospheres.

A collection of 50 drawings done from the 1930s to the 1980s by Cuban draughtsman and essayist Jorge Rigol, one of the most outstanding Cuban intellectuals of the last century.

Joining in the celebration of four centuries of Cuban literature, this exhibition features work by 12 artists/writers from colonial times to the 20th-century. The paintings of Juana Borrero, Carlos Enríquez, Marcelo Pogolotti, Arístides Fernández, Julio Girona, Felipe Orlando, Fayad Jamís, Pedro de Oráa, Samuel Feijóo, Cleva Solís, Adagio Benítez and Miguel Collazo, accompanied by fragments of their own writings, allow the viewer to approach the wide thematic and formal range of these masters of words and brushes.

Under the topic “Understanding Contemporariness from the Mass Media”, the 12th Salón de la Ciudad will aim to foster a space for the intervention of visual arts in today’s debate on the role of the mass media as “power” tools for reconstructing reality, and establishing consumer patterns and aesthetic canons.
On 6 June, starting at 10:00 am, at the Government Palace Conference Hall (Oficios esquina a Muralla, La Habana Vieja), important Cuban experts will lecture on a number of topics that include, among others, “Where from...who...how? Video art and new media in contemporary Cuban art,” “Technology: art and communication in the modern age,” “Globalized media, the artist, and art.”

Exhibition by painter, draughtsman, ceramist, photographer, graphic designer and silk-screen printer Salvador Corratgé, forerunner in Cuba of geometric abstraction and founder of the group Diez Pintores Concretos.

Painters, sculptors, photographers, designers, writers and filmmakers pay tribute to Cuban avant-garde painter Carlos Enríquez, on occasion of the 70th anniversary of two of his emblematic award-winning (1938) paintings: El rapto de las mulatas and Campesinos felices. The painter and critic Manuel López Oliva has said of El Rapto…, “There are works that synthesize, somehow, the most characteristic signs and values of a given age, of a space of social existence and even of a manner to culturally appreciate anthropological and symbolic facets of people. This is the case…of the painting El rapto de las mulatas, conceived by the still young Carlos Enríquez.”

Collective exhibition on which the critic Andrés D. Abreu has said, “Dealing in an artistic manner with the complex issues of image and behaviour, ethics and aesthetics that identify the Cubans of the 2000s and its new generations—also the years of the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC)—is becoming an unavoidable option, a problem area that is to be compensated by the most recent makers of an art that is imbued with the imaginary and the contextual processes…This project seeks to activate these windows for the extroversion in artistic terms of the visual and conceptual profile of these Cuban frescoes, which exist, survive and struggle in 21st-century Cuba, where a minority of people that are less uniform and monotypic, with an inclination towards pop and post exist.”

Collective exhibition of posters depicting the legendary figure of the Argentinean-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara.

Merlis Fernández Hernández, winner of the UNESCO International Prize at the 1999 Havana International Crafts Fair (FIART) and Grand Prix of Furniture Iberoarte in her hometown, Holguín, exhibits 12 exquisite pieces of furniture that include dining-room and living-room sets, armchair and table, bar on wheels, basin, escritoire, among others, all made of Cuban hardwoods and hides.

From her professional experience as an architect and a photographer, Nancy Reyes, with a precise mastery of colour, light and composition in her stained-glass window-like paintings, recreates scenes of Havana, which the artist acknowledges as her permanent source of inspiration.

Painting and ceramics about the Cuban landscape by Jesús Lara, who despite using contemporary techniques is profoundly romantic when he portrays his moods, expressed in very personal colours, rhythms and textures.

Collective exhibition by Kadir López, Kelvin López, Fidel Micó, Joel Ferrer, Adigio Benítez, Léster Campa, Alan González and Racial Gómez, who propose very different ways of approaching landscape art, which, for quite a while, seemed exhausted and today is showing an unexpected surge.

Drawings, paintings and installations by Frank Martínez, winner of the 2001 La Joven Estampa Prize, awarded by Casa de las Américas.

On occasion of the centenary of this pioneer of kinetic art, outstanding Rumanian artist Sandu Darié (1908-1991), who made Cuba his second home from 1941 to his death, the museum has organized an exhibition that includes catalogues from his personal and collective exhibitions, photographs, as well as personal papers and objects, among other items. Several of Darié’s pieces may be seen in a number of Cuban institutions, such as the mobiles located in the lobby of the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital in Havana.

Twenty-nine canvases and one pictorial object (2003-2008) make up this exhibition which focuses on the view of the many times prize-winning artist from Valencia, Spain, Antoni Miró (1944) of different areas of city life. Here, by way of figurative expressionism and photorealism, Miró reflects on the city, man and art.

Books edited by the Spanish draughtsman, painter, engraver and poet Gabriel García Maroto, including photos and papers that bear witness to the artist’s sojourn in Cuba in the summer of 1930, comprise this exhibition of one of the most outstanding figures of the Spanish pictorial renovation of the early 20th century.

The Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba announces a new space that seeks to re-establish the meetings of critique that were organized by the Visual Artists Association but were discontinued years ago. Rufo Caballero, one of the most original and controversial voices of present-day Cuban critique on visual arts, will act as moderator. The gathering will focus on the connection of the visual arts with video, music, literature, the theatre and dance.

The recently restored fortress—the first ever to have been built in the Americas—has reopened as a museum with a varied collection: submarine archaeology findings, including coins, gold and silver bars and discs, navigational instruments and jewellery; archaeological finds, such as lead and stone projectiles, coins, and Dutch- and English-made pipes, from the diggings carried out on the Castillo premises by a group of experts from the Archaeology Department of the City Historian’s Office; model ships of different types, among which the largest vessel of its time and a participant in the Battle of Trafalgar, the Santísima Trinidad, will surely be one of the highlights. Another attraction will be the restitution of the famous 17th-century bronze sculpture, known as La Giraldilla, to its original site. The sculpture, which has become the symbol of Havana, will once again welcome the visitors to this 16th-century fortress.

With a valuable collection of over 50 paintings, drawings, engravings and ceramics by outstanding 19th-and 20th-century Cuban artists (Vicente Escobar, Leopoldo Romañach, Antonio Rodríguez Morey, Eduardo Abela, Domingo Ramos, Fidelio Ponce de León, Amelia Peláez, Wifredo Lam, Marcelo Pogolotti, Luis Martínez Pedro, René Portocarrero, Mariano Rodríguez, Servando Cabrera Moreno, Raúl Martínez and Antonia Eiriz) this museum, headed by the renowned Cuban artist, Alexis Leyva (Kcho), is surely to become an important referent of Cuban visual arts.

Dedicated this year to sculptures and installations, the Ceramic Biennial is a meeting of the best Cuban ceramists who express audacious modern aesthetics and spirit in one of the oldest crafts known to man. This collection of 36 pieces allows the viewer to approach the conceptual intensity and the strong formal manufacture of contemporary Cuban ceramics.

Dedicated to the anniversary of three of its most famous comparsas: the centennial El Alacrán and Componedores de Batea, and the colorful Jardinera, on its 70th year of existence. The main attraction will be the traditional float and comparsa parades along the Malecón seafront. The carnivals from Veracruz (México), Cádiz (Spain) and Martinique.

Hip hop became a sensation in Cuba during the 1990s when this festival was born. Since then, the event has attracted an increasing number of hip hop artists from other countries, as well as featuring many important local groups. There are more than 1,000 rap groups in Cuba today. More recently, the festival has also included rap dancing, graffiti artists, a series of films, and a colloquium with discussion of hip hop culture and issues regarding this type of music which has delved into controversial aspects of Cuban life, such as racism and emerging economic inequalities.