Book Review: Art Brut Cuba by John Drury

As included in the book “Art Brut Cuba”, the performative work of artist Daldo Marte (b. 1982).

By JOHN DRURY March 24th, 2026

It is sometimes between two book covers - the paged place of cherished escape from the daily mundane - that one finds wing to fortify by way that investigative research, nutriment the creative soul. Documenting a stellar group of untrained Cuban makers, celebrated in two exhibitions taking place more than 40-years apart, and born of the friendship forged between Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985) and the Cuban entrepreneur and maker Samuel Feijóo (1914-1992), Art Brut Cuba (Five Continent Editions) is an invaluable look to the instinctual production of makers in forced cast shadow.

A beautiful matte cover depicting a fluid and non-representational, untitled work from 1983, by the artist Isabel Alemán Corrales (1915-death date unknown) is matched inside throughout the publication, with buff pages allowing the best, and truest, experience the reproduced works of dozens of Cuban artists. Work is both sensibly and chronologically divided, with those from the earlier exhibition in 1983, preceding those from the recent show - those newer, likewise installed at the Collection de l’Arte Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. There are no “schools” or “isms” here, in the brutish production of the Cuban intuitive artists. Artworks are unique to the makers and vary widely, in material, scope and approach.

Amongst the new generation of celebrated creators, the artist Daldo Marte (b. 1982) is a standout. Producing his own toys and outfits from an incredibly early age, of street-scavenged materials including his preferred rubber, he has continued the practice into his adulthood - to populate his life “stage” with the island’s other (unaware) inhabitants and the ever-crumbling environment around him. In the garb of superheroes imagined, as inspired by those believed understood through his exposure to limited mass media, Marte walks the Havana streets in his proudly worn concoctions, bringing to life a fictional world where he is the imagined savior of humanity; that allowing inarguable self-therapy, in battle his diagnosed schizophrenia. His practice is a brilliantly saved self.

As included in the book “Art Brut Cuba”, the work of artist Lázaro Antonio Martínez Duran (b. 1983); ballpoint pen, wax crayon and collage on recycled cardboard box.

It is in the make-do practice of costuming that the artist Ramón Moya Hernández (b. 1950) also finds some solace his personal predicament - that some respite his severely impoverished lifestyle - in traversing the rural streets of his neighborhood (that amongst the island’s most poor) in ornate makeshift costuming in portrayal for example, a kind of beggar-cum-Pope, or  a prisoner of Guantanamo Bay. His practice is a performative search for making some sense of the cruelty of power structures, unleashed. Vulnerable, he sometimes walks naked.

Finding in his imagined television sets originally drawn and now built of recycled cardboard boxes incorporating ballpoint pen, wax crayon and collage, the believed place of a world exclusionary his control, the artist Lázaro Antonio Martínez Duran (b. 1983) seeks in imagined broadcast, an understanding of global events as reflected in a society so often found in turmoil about him - and as particularly presented through the lens of Cuba’s unfortunate, present status in the world - a repercussion its history. We are reminded that a common people’s uncontrollable experience, here largely a result the pointed weapon of distant shores, is indeed (if only partially) surmountable through artistic passion (as one form of escapism for these battered souls); that when righteously resisted in a creativity self-reliant, that art might yet be the potent ammunition of the feral mind…the equalizer.

As included in the book “Art Brut Cuba”, the costuming of artist Ramón Moya Hernández (b. 1950).

The persistent and cruel embargo of a people of subsistent means of survival, sheds light not on the power and vitality of human perseverance in Cuba alone, but the inhumanity projected by an American government in pursuit only enriching itself through the suffering and suppression of less fortunate others. Cuba will eventually open, and the evils of a colonialist, capitalist creature will then surely swoop in to monetize an impoverished place that it has itself created; that spot fashioned of a truly uncaring posture for humanity, purposely left outside of the aggressors own selfish concerns.

With the publication of this important documentary tome, the people from the Caribbean island of Cuba prove themselves worthy this return to the exploration of their unique artists, in works brought to light via the support of the Riera Studio (an independent cultural initiative neither supported from Cuban cultural institutions, nor systematic funding it’s program from abroad). The book serves too, as a call to arms, in resistance the long-ongoing and current socioeconomic crisis that sees the Havana-based program begun by founder and director Samuel Riera increasingly endangered. As governmental aggressions turn now inward, here in the US, we the people will in self-preservation recognize, I hope, that a world brotherhood is the only real remedy for the suppression of liberty by fascist regimes.

“Within the Revolution, everything; outside of the Revolution, nothing!” Fidel Castro