Introduction to the book "Cuba en la grafica" (Cuba in the graphics)

In the beginning was the word. To start with the poster was an announcement: lots of words accompanied in some cases by a few sketches. But as the Chinese proverb says: "a picture is worth a thousand words", and with the passage of time words were reduced to a minimum. Although it is with words that we express our thoughts, the oldest documents of human thought are rock-drawings, hieroglyphics and codices.
On the other hand, from the start the poster has always been street art, and even at times street provocation. Susan Sontang, referring to the Cuban poster, rightly observed that "they give us a portable view of the world. A poster is like a fact in miniature: a cultural trophy".
Adelaida de Juan commented that in our country "in the 1960's with the triumph of the Revolution, the struggle against colonization, the rise of new formal modalities such as Pop and kinetics, there was a revitalization of the figurative forms of painting and the rise of new manifestations (graphics, the poster, the palisade) which will be one of the stron-
gest and most original visions of our changing history".
If the sixties in Cuba saw the development of the community art of the poster, the eighties (after a few attempts such as the design of containers for industry and articles of clothing), saw the birth of new experiences of involving artists in the world of mass production of works of art and with the production of material goods: the creation of the Rene Portocarrero serigraphy studio, the "Arte en la Carretera" project (Art in the Street), by way of open galleries along the new motorway, and the most important of all, TELARTE. Colour and rhythm returned to life, invading the street, this time animated by the most disparate and authentic of characters from our people. The prints on canvas live alongside the posters as works of art whose virtues are already extolled, being present in private homes, waiting rooms, offices, hotel rooms, hospitals and airports, communicating continually the artists' work and embellishing the places where we spend our lives daily; elements of transformation of the aesthetic taste of the people, reaffirming our identity.
Already converted into evocative images of important moments, surviving in archives, private collections, museums and libraries despite the fragile medium (card and various types of paper), these works are now presented in somewhat reduced size and quantity, but with a broad selection of artists and topics, in the form of a book. In this way the images may be preserved, may multiply once again, and may travel the world.

Reina Maria Valdes, Sept 1991