-I read in Lincoln Cushing's book that
movie posters were reissued every few years. Is this true? If so, how can
you tell if a poster is the original issue date or sometime later? Thanks.
>>Quoted from Lincoln Cushing's book"Revolucion"Cuban poster Art: "Many of the more popular ICAIC posters have been reissued, often many times, to meet the demand for sales."

I asked that question everytime I meet someone related to cuban posters.
-artists were overwhelmed by work in the 70's and 80's because Cuba was importing hundreds and hundreds of movies with each movie demanding a poster. At the end of the 70's production of posters was so intense that most posters were printed only 50 or less. Why Cuba would reprint when they had so many new works?
-ICAIC realized that posters were profitable when they legalize dollars in the early 90's. By the mid 90's when I started to buy posters, the store was in the 6th or 7th floor of an ICAIC building, totally isolated, dark office were you had to ride the scariest coffin-like elevator and wait until they bring a lady from another department to show you a very poor selection of posters that you have to select to be picked up next day. This lady frequently told me that poster sales was scarce with only a couple of sales a week. Why should they reprint? At that time the only reprints they had were Lucia,Retrato de Teresa, and a few of Bachs eye catching designs. The rest were all originals.
-SOME posters were reprinted every few years but only BY DEMAND (Maybe Lincoln Cushing was referring to these posters). If cuban artists were going to a movie festival in a foreign country to exhibit their works they would pick a particular design to be reprinted and give away as promotion. In other ocassions ICAIC reproduced images that were made to conmemorate a government anniversary. During a period and to avoid dated images, lets say, in one of ICAIC anniversaries, they would reprint an old image related to that anniversary and they took the year out and instead of Azcuy-1971, it would say Azcuy-ICAIC. My husband has done extensive research about the authenticity issue on cuban posters and so far this is only part of the answer. Cuba always overlooked the importance these posters as collectible works of art and never kept a record of their printing.

-Upon doing some research I discovered many of the posters were reprinted in Cuba for a number of reasons.  I was wondering if you could identify some of the posters that are up for bid now or in the future that are first prints.  Thank you and i'm eager to start dealing with you. 

Hi: Thanks for sharing your interest in cuban posters. Any question let me know and I will give you all information I have on hand. Most posters I sale are originals, (ALL Ospaaal political I sell are originals), the ones that are not, I write :cuban reprint). Now,lets define an original. There is no way to know for sure if a poster was made among the first 250(the fixed amount they made in the 60'70's and 80's) or if the poster was reprinted later in the same year. ICAIC started to make reprints back in 1995 when they realize they could sell these posters to tourist and make money.Before that,the posters were use for display and most were given away to different government departments and cubans used to adorn their houses with them. Nobody knew at that time that these posters were going to be collectable, so nobody cared how many posters were reprinted or not. Most of the information comes from my husband's interviews with people that were linked to the making and the distribution of cuban posters. In the 1970's, the importation of foreign movies was so big (each film demanded one poster) that in order to satisfy the demand they have to reduce the production to 125 copies per title. At that rate that they kept until early 80's, they have no time to reprint anything. Therefore as a rule of thumb, most posters from the 60,70,and 80's that are yellow, are originals. Other factors also apply when identifying these posters but that will make my email a bit longer than it is.Recent reprints use an ironic better quality paper that does not turn yellow as quick as the others but the application of the paints thinner and the quality of SOME differs from the originals. irina