The poster is a mystery, it is even independent….my [design] principles come from both [Saul] Bass and [Saul] Steinberg, and also from the protest songs, from simplicity, visual impact and easy understanding. The poster must be a gift, an agreeable surprise, but above all that it must be understood, simple, but not elementary.

– Alfredo Rostgaard graphic designer for ICAIC (1966–1970)

Hollywood in Havana: Five Decades of Cuban Posters Promoting U.S. Films assembles innovative Cuban posters created between 1961 and 2012 that promote Hollywood films as well as Cuban films about the United States. Produced by the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC), or Cuban Film Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry, the posters were part of an initiative of the Revolutionary government to develop cultural literacy and promote discussions after Fidel Castro overthrew the United States-supported dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Cuban posters are astonishing in their design, stylistic diversity, and craft and, with the exception of depictions of Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, are in striking contrast to the vast majority of Hollywood film posters, which feature movie stars.

ICAIC, the Revolution, and the EmbargoThe 1959 Cuban Revolution not only altered the political, social, and economics spheres, but also the cultural sphere, greatly expanding access and engagement with the arts, particularly cinema. Due to a lack of public education during the Batista regime, Cuba had an illiteracy

rate of over 40 percent in rural areas. The leaders of the guerrilla struggle were quick to perceive the artistic and educational potential of film, which they saw as a powerful and effective way to reach the entire population.1 In March 1959, less than three months after coming to power, the Cuban government formed ICAIC to facilitate film production, promotion, and distribution.

The United States broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 and in 1962 imposed a total trade embargo. The embargo significantly damaged Cuba’s economy and created challenging conditions for every aspect of life in Cuba. The United States had supplied two-thirds of Cuba’s imports and purchased most of Cuba’s exports, primarily sugar. The embargo pushed Cuba into closer relations with the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, U.S. films remained popular, and despite the ongoing embargo, Cubans continue to receive and enjoy them. While it is not definitively known how these films arrive in Cuba, it can be assumed that they come from a combination of sources: supportive filmmakers, other countries, and bootlegged copies.

The Revolution encouraged the development of a local film industry and the creation of new graphics, music, and distribution channels to support and promote it. The Cuban film poster broke with tradition on all fronts: form, content, and printing method. Throughout the United States and Europe, all film posters were (and continue to be) mass-produced by offset lithography. This printing technique was not economically viable for the relatively small quantities of posters needed in Cuba. Prior to the Revolution, most film posters—primarily promoting films from the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Argentina—were imported into Cuba. Only one lithographic press in Havana and one in New York are known to have printed offset posters promoting Cuban films.

In 1943, Eladio Rivadulla Martínez, a Cuban artist, journalist, and silkscreen printer working in Havana, began screen printing film posters.2 Although his designs at the time followed the same movie star-focused formula of international film posters, Rivadulla started a tradition that continues to this day. After the Revolution, Rivadulla continued to screen print film posters, including the first ones produced by ICAIC. He also created the very first political poster after the triumph of the Revolution, using the traditional film poster model but replacing the movie star with Fidel Castro’s portrait.

Poster DesignAlthough ICAIC posters are now prized throughout the world for their beauty and innovation, their creative designs often developed out of necessity. Though designers used the artisanal silkscreen technique, a technologically less-complex process than offset lithography, they were nonetheless affected by the embargo. Shortages of paper and ink resulted in a reduced poster size, small runs, and a limited color palette. In the early 1960s, posters had to be 50 percent white, due to a lack of inks, yet artists worked around the paucity of resources by reducing the number of elements on a page, using flat colors, and replacing detailed images with simpler yet often bolder graphic forms.

When resources reemerged in 1967 with the arrival of inks donated from international supporters of the Revolution, the colors began to soar off the page. Artists also integrated a wide range of international styles, including the pared-down and symbolically bold aesthetic of Saul Bass, the psychedelic style popularized by the San Francisco Avalon and Fillmore posters, abstraction, Pop, and Op art.

Being in ICAIC was like being on a different island. They were difficult times artistically, as in all fields; there was an official attempt to implement Socialist Realism that came from the USSR, and ICAIC opposed this aesthetic, believing back then that the revolution could be modern, without Stalinist ideas.

– Antonio Reboiro graphic designer for ICAIC (1963–1982)

Alfredo Guevara and Saúl Yelín, two of ICAIC’s founders, encouraged creativity and free expression.3

As a result, ICAIC became a magnet for artists, musicians, and writers who did not conform to the more limited aesthetic favored by the socialist bloc, which characterized modern art and the sixties youth culture as imperialist decadence. ICAIC’s posters profoundly affected the graphic arts throughout Cuba, just as the experimental sound tracks of ICAIC films influenced Cuban music. ICAIC’s aesthetic experiments even impacted the more traditional political posters produced by diverse Cuban agencies.

A Distinctly Cuban StyleFree from the commercial need to sell tickets, Cuban film posters encouraged viewers to understand images, to learn to look at art—and the world—differently. They transformed streets into galleries and sometimes were more engaging than the films they promoted. U.S. graphic designer Saul Bass, whose brilliant film posters interpreted films instead of featuring actors, inspired many ICAIC designers.

Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe are two of the few movie stars represented in ICAIC posters. Chaplin continues to be revered in Cuba for his heroic depictions of the dispossessed worker who had fallen victim to capitalist industrialization. Chaplin’s most memorable character was The Little Tramp, who represented the everyman and embodied Chaplin’s political views. Although Chaplin claimed no party affiliation, he was often accused of being a communist. In 1952, during the height of McCarthyism, he was banned from returning to the United States and did not go back for twenty years.

Chaplin is so revered in Cuba that he literally and figuratively represents ICAIC. In 1961, the first ICAIC poster ever produced featured him, and in every decade since, his iconic features—toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, and heavy eyebrows—are used to promote films, festivals, and cine móvil.

In contrast to Charlie Chaplin, the popularity of Marilyn Monroe in Cuba is unexpected. The Hollywood film industry hid her left politics from U.S. audiences, but Monroe’s support of the Cuban Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement as well as her solidarity with the Hollywood writers and actors blacklisted during McCarthyism endeared her to the Cuban people.

Mobile CinemaIn 1961, ICAIC created cine móvil, mobile projection units that brought films to the many Cubans in remote parts of the country who lacked electricity and had never seen a film. Through the cine móvil, ICAIC participated in the three major programs of the new government: agrarian reform, healthcare, and education. Ironically, the immediate precedent for the cine móvil was the United States Information Agency (USIA), which operated mobile cinema vans out of its Havana embassy, disseminating U.S. propaganda films throughout Cuba.4

ICAIC transported the projectors, generators, and films for these traveling movie theaters by truck, boat, and mule to some of the most remote areas of Cuba. Chaplin’s Modern Times was the first film many saw. Por Primera Vez/For the First Time, a 1967 Cuban documentary by Octavio Cortázar, captures first the uncertainty and anticipation and then the amazement as more than one hundred people watched their first film.

Whether promoting films in remote parts of Cuba or bringing art and cultural education to the streets, ICAIC posters represent the innovation and ingenuity of the Cuban spirit. While ICAIC posters are frequently exhibited all over the world, this is the first time that posters promoting U.S. films have been the focus. No matter how familiar one is with Cuba and its extraordinary graphic tradition, the imagination and creativity displayed in Hollywood in Havana: Five Decades of Cuban Posters Promoting U.S. Films will surprise and provoke.

Carol A. Wells, PMCA Guest CuratorCenter for the Study of Political Graphics

1By the end of 1961, the year of the literacy brigades, more than seven hundred thousand Cubans had learned to read and write, and Cuba’s national literacy rate reached 96 percent, one of the highest in the world.2 As a student in the 1930s, Rivadulla studied with Helmut Wotzkow, a German graphic designer who taught at the Bauhaus, then taught in Havana after the Nazis closed the legendary art school.3 Alfredo Guevara and Fidel Castro had a long and close history, from their student days at the University of Havana until Guevara’s death in 2013. As Guevara’s commitment to the Revolution was unquestioned, he was able to criticize government policy as well as promote artistic experimentation.4 The United States also operated these mobile propaganda vans throughout Latin America, with major concentrations in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia.

COVER: Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Por Primera Vez/For the First Time [detail], 1968; GATE FOLD LEFT: Claudio Sotolongo, Tiempos Modernos/Modern Times, 2009; GATE FOLD RIGHT: Nelson Ponce Sánchez, La Naranja Mecanica/A Clockwork Orange, 2009; INSIDE LEFT TO RIGHT: René Azcuy, ¿Que Paso Con Baby Jane?/Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, 1976; Marcos Dimas, La Revolución de los Inconformes/What's So Bad About Feeling Good?, 1972; Eladio Rivadulla Martínez, 26 de Julio/26 of July, 1959; Antonio Reboiro, Moby Dick, 1968; Claudio Sotolongo, Cabaret, 2009; Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Por Primera Vez/For the First Time, 1968; BACK COVER: Julio Eloy Mesa, Retrospectiva De La Cinematografia Chicana/Retrospective of Chicano Cinematography, 1979; ALL IMAGES: Silkscreen, 29 15/16 x 20 1/16 inches. Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos (ICAIC). Courtesy of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics

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Carol A. Wells is an activist, art historian, curator, lecturer, and writer. She has been collecting posters and producing political poster art exhibitions since 1981. In 1988, Wells founded the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, an educational and research archive with more than 90,000 social movement posters from the nineteenth century to the present. She believes that the power of graphics can help open up a truly democratic arena for political debate. 

Hollywood in Havana: Five Decades of Cuban Posters Promoting U.S. Films is co-organized by the Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) in partnership with the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (CSPG), curated by CSPG Founder and Executive Director Carol A. Wells, and accompanied by a brochure. The exhibition is supported by the PMCA Board of Directors, PMCA Ambassador Circle, and the California Visionary Fund. Media sponsorship is provided by LALA. 

The exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.