Cuban painting has achieved its maturity through the efforts of the artists of the generation of the 1920s and 1930s, such figures as Victor Manuel Garcia, Carlos Enriquez, Eduardo Abela, and Amelia Peláez. They and the succeeding generation (i.e. René Portocarrero, Cundo Bermúdez, Mario Carreño, and Wifredo Lam), following in the footsteps of the Mexican muralists, combined European modernism with a national identity. Cuban folklore, the Cuban "scene" arrived in the island's painting long before 1959. This art was associated with nationalism and, in most cases, with a liberal and even radical consciousness on the part of the artists. Again, there are striking parallels here with Mexico and, for that matter, the U.S. of the W.P.A. years. Thus, the post-revolutionary period had but to put the aspects of its heritage it deemed useful in the Marxist-Leninist context of government control and propaganda in the form of updated socialist realism and dramatic "agitprop" image and slogans. The great difference between the old and the new is that, overall, artists in the past had freedom of expression and were not constrained by the requirements of a particular ideology and its bureaucrats.

The work of Humberto Dionisio should be seen in light of the above. Born in 1950, Dionisio was trained as a graphic designer and became a noted poster artist during the 1970s. His paintings reflect the same variety of sources that left a mark, for better or worse, on his contemporaries. In such works as Two Friends After the Fight (1977) and the undated Guajiro, the artist shows an interest in the life of the Cuban peasant that is characteristic of the island's art from the 1920s to the present. Dionisio delves beyond the superficial, tourist brochure aspects of daily life in the Caribbean which are often found in the paintings of less inspired artists. There are underlying levels of sensuality, pathos, humor and nostalgia. The Nude from 1980, executed in Miami after Dionisio came to this country via the Marial boat lift, shows a female figure in a colonial Havana interior. In Black Girls Scaring the Pigeons (1976) the artist depicts an amusing scene again set in the nostalgic atmosphere of the old city. Finally, the undated work showing a peasant picking bananas and Manuel's Place (1981) reflect the eroticism of similar portraits by Servando Cabrera.

Dionisio was, at the time of his death in 1987, still a young artist intent on exploration and change. The influences that can be detected in much of his work, however, do not detract from his talent. He had a vigorous sense of line and color. The source of this may well be the artist's graphic training and his interest in poster art. The poster for La Familia Pilon, a 1982 play performed at Florida International University, is a masterpiece of economy and wit. Playing on a double pun (in Cuba la familia Pilon is used to designate a family of down home folks and in Miami Pilon is also a popular brand of coffee) Dionisio transforms the Cuban flag into a coffee machine, dripping the liquid into a mug. The red and blue are, of course, the colors of the flag and the whole instantly communicates to the viewer a humorous look at national identity. This poster is, also, an example of an art from the island that has acquired a new identity in exile while retaining its suitability for propagandistic uses.

It would be unfair to reduce Dionisio to the examples we have discussed above, with their emphasis on popular life and eye-catching graphic design. During the past ten years, since at least 1980, there has been a distinct change in the work of young Cuban artists in terms of both style and content. The political baggage has begun to be replaced by a new internationalism in which references to national culture are subtler and more personal. Curiously, Dionisio, while living in exile, also followed this pattern. From 1985-1987 this became quite obvious. He experimented with constructions of wood, found objects and collage. These usually have religious connotations. White Crucifix (1985) is a frightening image of a doll in the form of an infant nailed to a cross and surrounded by references to "the sins of the flesh". Brown Crucifix (also from 1985) is a variation on this, as is one of the last pieces completed by Dionisio: a tabernacle-like shrine containing dolls and a martyred, autobiographical Christ. These constructions have roots in the Baroque-derived kitsch images of Roman Catholic countries (with a measure of Afro-Cuban Santería as well). The work of Miami artist Maria Brito also comes to mind.

Dionisio's last works are concerned with lost innocence, anger, pain, death, and perhaps redemption through art, if not religion. A victim of AIDS, it is no small irony that the artist should have left Cuba seeking personal and artistic freedom only to encounter such a tragedy. But the shock of his illness gave him a new maturity. These late constructions are doubtless his most accomplished artistic statements for they are concerned with universal issues. Like the best of the young Cuban artists on the island, Dionisio was finally able to break with the past and use his heritage in the context of his own life and of the common human anxieties of the later twentieth century.