M65 Grupo Antillano

Manifesto (1978)

Grupo Antillano (the Antilles Group) were a black-consciousness art collective founded by the sculptor and printmaker Rafael Queneditt Morales (1942–2016) in Havana, Cuba, in 1978. They were a loose gathering of like-minded intellectuals, artists, writers and musicians who wanted both to establish a national Cuban identity that embraced its African heritage and also to express their solidarity with other Caribbean artists (hence the group’s name). Unlike the earlier Afrocubanismo movement of the 1930s, in which black street culture in Cuba was hijacked by middle-class whites, most members of Grupo Antillano were Afro-Cubans who saw themselves as part of a wider conversation about art, race and colonialism, picking up the thread of Caribbean cultural resistance from ‘Légitime Défense’ (M4) and the Négritude movement (M7). Some of the group’s artists had attended FESTAC 77, the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts held in Nigeria in 1977, which promoted the concepts of Pan-Africanism (M39) and fraternity between African nations and across the African diaspora. The works created by the group’s members possessed no single distinct, defining style. Instead, they displayed a wide variety of African aesthetic influences, from folk art to religious symbolism, and were characterized by a strong underlying desire to represent the whole of Antillean culture, not just its Hispanic heritage.

Grupo Antillano’s manifesto is believed to have been presented as a poster at their exhibition at the International Gallery of Art, Havana, in September 1978. In acknowledging the group’s debt to the Afrocubanismo revolution, the manifesto singles out two of the earlier movement’s most prominent proponents, the poet Nicolás Guillén and composer Amadeo Roldán. Grupo Antillano held their final exhibition in 1983, after which they faded into obscurity, predominantly due to a lack of critical recognition.

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Art and literature are the most refined and profound representations of the social condition and development of people.

Through such manifestations cultural groups project their personality fully and reaffirm their nationality. Imperialism understands this phenomenon, which accounts for its incessant efforts to culturally penetrate other peoples, with the ultimate goal of depersonalization and denationalization.

The Cuban people could not escape this ideological struggle. Thus in the 1930s, parallel with the Revolution then in gestation, a cultural movement emerged with genuinely Cuban roots which began to discover and develop our personality and to reaffirm our nationality and its underlying rationale.

Once again in our history the empire tried to take over our revolution, halting, rolling back, and attempting to chip away at the process. Imperialism understands the strength and power of the spirit, and spiritual phenomena could not escape these material and socio-economic efforts by the forces of imperialism. A process of cultural penetration that deformed and misdirected the movement began, not coincidentally, with the halting steps toward revolution.

Such penetration never achieved its goal. Forces which were indomitable, because they were the legitimate representation of the people, engaged in a great ideological battle. This was the case, among others, of Nicolás Guillén.

Consciously or unconsciously, this movement resolved all the anxieties over the underlying rationale of the ethnic origins of the Cuban people, ‘our definitive profile.’ ‘We are Latin-Africans,’ said our commander in chief, thus profoundly defining the roots of our world and the only possible path for the development of our national personality and consciousness. In music this came to be called Afro-Cuban, and upon reflection we can synthetize it more simply by calling it Cuban. Being Cuban is the result of our Latin-African origins.

In the 1940s three painters, independently and without yet knowing one another began to move along the path marked by Guillén and Roldán, among others, and today defined by our maximum leader. Their struggle was not easy. They were opposed by social, racial and other prejudices which could not adjust to the truth and fullness of our mixed blood, despite the strength and quality of their work.

Today, with the definitive triumph of our revolution, and the socialist character that gives it definition and orientation, the repressed creative forces of our people have been liberated. In the past expression was limited by the cultural repression of the times. Today, in contrast, we see a growing number of Cuban painters and sculptors who are motivated simply by their profound condition as Cubans and an awareness of their ethnic origins who consciously or unconsciously are taking the only path possible toward a common identity. When this movement began they were separated by distance, often did not know one another personally, or know one another’s work.

This is not the creation of a group that holds forth a new ideal to struggle toward. It is, rather, the reformation of a group of artists who for years have been travelling along this path – some for 35 years, others for 15. Now we have identified ourselves and are connected by the common incentive to analyze together the path that up to now we have travelled separately, which we know to be the only way capable of providing a common rationale which connects us to our origins and whose full development will lead us to our encounter with a new, young, and strong culture which we can only describe as Cuban.

The Antilles are our common real environment, and we aspire to greater communication with our sibling peoples of the Antillean world. We are not interested in other worlds whose understanding cannot have spiritual depth. This does not mean that we reject them, but we need to base ourselves in our own language and strengthen ourselves conceptually and with sensitivity on what for us is most immediately ours – the Antilles.

Unfortunately in this regrouping not everyone finds their values in line with these principles. This is not our fault. We have invited them to analyze and come together while developing full awareness of our path. They are fulfilling their desire for isolation. By saying this we do not criticize them. We simply want to declare publicly that we have not ignored anyone and that this is not a group organized around personal interests. The whole group is united around the ideals expressed here and must collaborate in seeking our artistic path. If we have left out any comrade it is because we do not know him personally, and we would appreciate being so informed.

Although we do not avoid aesthetics, our objective is not simply aesthetic. On the contrary, we struggle toward our objective as a statement of our personality, but the basis of our path is, in sum, what is Cuban.

Havana, 26 of July 1978

Manuel Couceiro, Painter; Ángel Laborde, Painter-ceramist; Leonel Morales, Painter; Arnaldo Larrinaga, Painter; Rogelio Rodríguez Cobas, Sculptor; Rafael Queneditt Morales, Sculptor-engraver; Ramón Haiti, Sculptor-painter