To speak of pop art, from a formal angle, is to refer to plain, strong colors,
not mixed to each other, of a contrast of complementary, of absence of lights
and shades and scarce volumetric. To distinguish it in the thematic order,
make us remember immediately the U.S. canon, with its images of mass culture
and the advertising announcement.
But the true thing is that this manifestation absorbed matters peculiar to
the different countries in which it was able to settle. This way, a recent
exhibition at the Havana Museum of Fine arts allowed recognizing the social
critic marked accent of the Grupo Cr?a de Valencia (Chronic Group of Valencia),
Spain. Now, at the Havana Club Gallery of the Rum Museum, you can appreciate
the way in which it has been assimilated by the Cuban artists in several stages.
Avoiding the diligent historical route due to space limitations and time, the curators of Confluencias (Confluences), selected three outstanding representatives of the pop art in Cuba: Ra?art?z, Jos?? Fresquet (Fr?z) and Julio Ferrer.
Ra?art?z, coming from abstractionist art in the 50s decade of the last century, along with the Eleven Group synchronized with his time in the 60s, after the revolutionary victory in the Island, representing with crackling tropical colors the political propaganda icons of the moment. His multiple appropriations of Jos?arti’s figure and that of Che Guevara's became very well-known.
Fr?z emerges one decade later and his origins go back to graphic design and the cartoon. In the last years he has appealed to digital art, taking advantage of his possibilities for a wider visual inter-play. He opts for being focused in the universal set of problems: war, hunger, prostitution and material ambitions; with a harsh honesty, sometimes wounding, and always provocative. "Impact art that disturbs and alerts": I remember these words on the artist pronounced by the writer Reinaldo Gonz?z.
The youngest of the three, Julio Ferrer, has developed a work of visible connection with Roy Liechtenstein, also related to other canonical pieces of modern art. Fan of the comics, satirical, and with incisive humor, Ferrer chooses the themes of the most current reality in the Island; hence the abundance of references to the emigration issue, as in the piece "Padre Nuestro" ("Our Father"), or the artist's agony pushed to the market ("El copista") ("The copyist").
The sample as a whole shows the principles' validity of pop art in Cuban premises for its capacity to reflect diverse instants of our history and culture. It also highlights the process of unavoidable insertion of the Island in an uncertain global context; era of changes, "postmodern" or not, where the walls between high and low culture -also – usually fall.