Arts and Literature of Cuba

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Painting and Sculpture U p until the first decades of the 20th century, Cuban painting was dominated by the conventions of aca- demic art. Cuba had its own national academy of fine arts—the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, known popularly as Academia San Alejandro. Founded in 1818 by a French painter, San Alejandro drew inspiration from the venerable national arts academies of Europe. Like those institutions, San Alejandro sought to instruct the most promising students in the techniques of drawing and painting. And, like Europe’s national arts academies, it effectively functioned as an arbiter of what constituted the best art, and who was considered a serious artist. The highest art was assumed to be academic art—that is, art that followed the conventions taught at the academy.

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