【BOOK INTRODUCTION】
Beyond the boundaries of mainstream art history, there have always been forms of creativity that emerge naturally from lived experience, personal belief, and the inner world. Art Brut CUBA focuses on Cuban Art Brut, tracing more than four decades of artworks and archival materials to reveal how self-taught artists—working outside formal art education and the commercial art system—developed direct, independent, and deeply vital forms of expression within Cuba’s distinctive political, economic, and social environment.
The book was published to accompany the exhibition of the same name, held at the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland, from December 2024 to April 2025. It features essays by Cuban authors and international specialists, an extensive selection of reproductions, and previously unpublished historical correspondence and archival documents. More than a record of the exhibition, the volume reconstructs the decades-long relationship between Cuban Art Brut and the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne.
This history can be traced back to 1983, when Jean Dubuffet, one of the most influential advocates of Art Brut, sought to bring works by self-taught Cuban artists into the collection. Through works assembled by his friend Samuel Feijóo, the first exhibition devoted to Cuban Art Brut was organised. More than forty years later, Art Brut CUBA revisits this important history while extending its perspective into the present, revealing both continuity and change across different generations of artists.
The exhibition and publication are organised into two main sections. The first focuses on the Signos Group, founded by Samuel Feijóo in the late 1960s, and examines how printmaking, drawing, and graphic art were used to preserve and promote Cuban popular culture. The second introduces contemporary self-taught artists supported by Riera Studio, presenting the diversity of Art Brut practice in Cuba today. From historical works to contemporary approaches, the book shows that Cuban Art Brut is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a continuing and evolving cultural tradition.
Many of the works featured in the book are made from cardboard, newspapers, scrap metal, recycled waste, wood, jute fibre, and other readily available materials. In the hands of the artists, these modest and limited resources are transformed into highly personal images and objects that reflect everyday realities, social conditions, political circumstances, and private obsessions. The works are at once raw and sensitive, shaped by material scarcity yet driven by an extraordinary freedom from artistic convention.
Art Brut CUBA is more than an exhibition catalogue; it is an important visual document for reconsidering how Cuba may be understood. Moving beyond familiar images of cigars, vintage cars, and Caribbean scenery, the book enters the private worlds of its artists to reveal a Cuba that is more complex, more authentic, and far less easily defined by stereotypes.
【DETAILS】
Authors: Derbis Campos, Andrea Dal Lago, Edward M. Gómez, Sarah Lombardi
Publisher: Five Continents Editions
Publication Year: 2024
Dimensions: 27 × 21 cm
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 208
