The McMullen Student Ambassadors are pleased to present Art in Focus, featuring an informal discussion between Boston College professors from various academic departments. With each new episode, we aim to uncover a unique perspective on the works on display, informed by research and methodologies in areas of study across the University. Each conversation will bring the exhibition’s works “into focus” to highlight art’s expansive reach and interdisciplinary nature.
For this episode, we invited Boston College Professors Sylvia Sellers Garcia of the History Department and Wan Tang of the Romance Languages and Literatures Department to discuss the exhibition “The Lost Generation: Women Ceramicists and the Cuban Avant-Garde.” Together, they analyze Emilia Pelaez’s “Mujer con Pez” and highlight themes of feminism, power, and abstract style.
View the full painting below:
Amelia Peláez (1896–1968) Woman with Fish | Mujer con pez, 1948 oil on canvas | óleo sobre lienzo, Col. Cernuda Arte
Opening on January 29, 2024, Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art will host “The Lost Generation: Women Ceramicists and the Cuban Avant-Garde,” an exhibition showcasing the artistic products of the Taller de Santiago de las Vegas. Produced amidst the Cuban Revolution (1949-59) in a ceramic workshop on the outskirts of Havana, over one hundred vases, mugs, water jugs, murals, and plates will be on display for visitors. While these objects are remarkable as beautiful pieces of artwork, their significance to the exploration of gender, psychology, social status, and cultural attainment in Cuban society is equally fascinating.1 We can track this artistic movement back to Juan Miguel Rodriguez de la Cruz, the owner of the premier Taller de Santiago de Las Vegas, and he was known for employing little-known female ceramicists. In Spanish, “taller” refers to an art studio or workshop.
To better appreciate the importance of “The Lost Generation: Women Ceramicists and the Cuban Avant-Garde,” let us take a look at some of the women who made reverberations in two main ways: first, for the acceptance of ceramics as a Cuban fine art form and second, for the acknowledgment of women in the arts.
Artists outside the Taller de Santiago de las Vegas, November 1953: Rosita Jiménez, Aleida González, Amelia Peláez del Casal, Juan Miguel Rodríguez de la Cruz, Mirta García Buch, María Elena Jubrías Álvarez.
Mirta Garcia Buch (1919-96) (pictured above; second from right) pioneered artistic ceramics in Cuba. She is best known for her murals of ceramic fragments displayed at Hotel El Bosque and Hotel La Sirena in Varadero, which she completed in 1995. In the McMullen exhibition, visitors can observe Buch’s craft in the work Flower Pot with Fish-Man, a painted ceramic from 1953. Other notable achievements of Buch include her work as a technical draftsman at the National Institute of Agrarian Reform and as a technical lithography draftsman at the National Bank of Cuba.2 A selection of her works are part of a permanent exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts of the National Institute of Culture in Havana.
Mirta Garcia Buch, Artist (1919-96) & Juan Miguel Rodriguez de la Cruz, Ceramicist (1902-90) Flower Pot with Fish-Man, painted ceramic (1953), private collection.
Amelia Pelaez (1896-1968) (pictured above; center) used cubist and European modernist styles in her ceramics. Unlike other female ceramicists in the exhibition, Pelaez had extensive art training. As a student, she moved to Paris on a grant from the Cuban government to study art solely.3 She seized this opportunity by taking Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and Ecole du Louvre classes. The eleventh Salon de Tuileries featured Pelaez as a testament to her studies. After returning to Cuba, Pelaez worked in a solo exhibition at a women’s art club in Havana, known as the Lyceum; this female-centered art space helped Pelaez achieve her renowned modernist Cuban style. Beyond ceramics, Pelaez was interested in paintings, drawings, and murals. Her fervent passion for the arts led her to accomplish acclaimed murals at the Habana Hilton Hotel and Tribal de Cuentas in Havana. After she died in 1968, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City acquired many of Pelaez’s pieces. Today, we remember Pelaez as a trailblazer in Cuban art and one of the first to introduce artistic symbolism into ceramics.4 You can view Pelaez’s artistry in this spring’s (2024) exhibition by seeing the piece Ceramic tiles for Salesian Rose Perez Velasco House Mural, a series of painted ceramic tiles from 1956.
Most of the remaining information on Elia Rosa Fernandez de Media‘s life and artistic work is from the University of Miami’s Elia Rosa F. Mendia Collection.5 The collection holds personal papers, photos, and media correspondence for research purposes. One of the more interesting materials in the collection is a booklet from the Cuban Museum of Art and Culture’s exhibit on Cuban women. As a lesser-known Cuban artist, we celebrate Mendia today for her Nordic-inspired and austere ceramics.6 In collaboration with artists like Marta Arjona and Amelia Pelaez, Mendia developed her craft by creating art in her own Taller de Vedado.
The work pictured below exemplifies the collaboration between female artists during the “golden age” of Cuban ceramics. The painted ceramic plate, Collective Plate with Fish Motifs, is a product of Rosa Jimenez, Aleida Gonzalez, Maria Elena Jubrias, Mirta Garcia Buch, and Elia Rosa Fernandez de Mendia. As represented in the piece, the camaraderie between Cuban female artists produced a period of power in Cuban art history. With their various styles blending, it is clear that they created their very own ceramic aesthetic together, and we should forever remember the legacy of Cuban female artists.
Ceramicist: Juan Miguel Rodríguez de la Cruz (1902-90) Collective Plate with Fish Motifs, painted ceramic (1954), private collection.
