October 19, 2004
By Josi Aurelio Paz

HAVANA, Cuba - The religious theme, essentially taboo in expositions and art shows that were organized in Cuba in the 1980s, is gaining ground.

The change was sparked by a search for a human response to the vicissitudes brought by the fall of European socialism and the call to the unity of all Cubans to save the country, no matter what their philosophical perspective.

This created an opening in the art field that has been expressed, over the years in a discrete by very present fashion in many of the collections that are exhibited and in the competitions.

Art, in its different modalities, as a manifestation of the inner world of artists, has sought to express this spiritual need on the part of an eminently believing people.

The religious explosion in the 1990s both among religious of African order and in the Catholic and Evangelical world on the Island, has also taken the expressions of human agony before the dilemma of the Cross to canvas, wood and metal.

In 1993 the Cuban Council of Churches convened the First Art Exhibition with a Christian content, with the participation of artists from several regions of the country. The event was inaugurated on the Day of Cuban Culture, in the Kairos Center in Matanzas.

The National Popular Art Fairs, which are celebrated every two years, also reflect this trend. The most renowned painters do not discriminate against the theme, considering it valid within the complex psychological world of the Cuban.

However, the Church, like a social entity, must further empower art that reflects its task and stimulates those believers who want to express their commitment to God through a physical representation of full spirituality, according to some young people with artistic concerns within the ecumenical movement.

October 20, the Day of the Cuban Culture, in commemoration of the first time the music was showcased that would become the National Hymn in 1868 in the city of Bayamo, is a good occasions to express this sentiment.

Many congregations, not distant from the humanist sense that challenges them, dedicate their worship services to exalting the values of the identity of a people that was formed, essentially but two opposing cultures, but with a fierce religious sense, such as the Spanish and the African, they said.

ALC News Service