Abigail McEwan, Revolutionary Horizons: Art and polemics in 1950s Cuba

Impressively documented and lavishly illustrated, this book traces the history of abstract art as it came to prominence in Cuba in the 1950s. Flourishing against the backdrop of the Batista dictatorship, which at a given moment co-opted abstract art as part of its modernization project, the current was marginalized after the Revolution because of its supposed lack of social concern as well as of “Cubanness”. However, Abigail McEwan shows that abstract art originally emerged outside of officia..