Martínez came of age as a member of the group Los Once, which pioneered abstract expressionism in Cuba during the 1950s. In the years following the Revolution, he evolved a now iconic figurative style informed by international Pop art, exemplified here in Rosas y estrellas. “I discovered that in Cuba there’s a popular art, an anonymous graphic art full of humour, irony, gaiety and naïveté,” he explained at the time. “I saw a possibility in that. The elements and values of this graphic art allowed me to use colors and to draw with absolute freedom. I began with an image of Martí. When I put it side by side with others, the result was a painting with a dynamic aspect, full of suggestions” (“Raul Martinez’ Statement,” Cuba, revolution et culture 7, 1965, p. 68).

Martí, the beloved “Apostle of Cuban Independence,” appears at the center of Rosas y estrellas holding a bouquet of white roses that allude to the opening line of his famous poem, “Cultivo una rosa blanca” (1891), and its message of reconciliation. Martínez surrounds him with storied Cuban revolutionaries—Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, Máximo Gómez, Antonio Maceo—who stand under the watchful gaze of Simón Bolívar, the “Liberator” of Latin America, at left. The smiling heroes stand in colorful solidarity, connecting Cuba’s long fight for independence from Spain, achieved in 1898, to the communist revolution of 1959. “Cuban contemporary artists are part of something without precedent in the history of our nation,” Martínez declared: “the Revolution” (ibid.).

Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park