Pop-up Event: The Lost Generation: Women Ceramicists and the Cuban Avant-Garde

The Lost Generation: Women Ceramicists and the Cuban Avant-Garde examines the participants and artistic output from 1949 to 1959 of the Taller de Santiago de las Vegas, a ceramic workshop on the outskirts of Havana. A decade of artistic experimentation primarily by little-known women ceramicists had deep reverberations both for the acceptance of ceramics as a fine art form in Cuba and for the symbiotic relationship that flourished between the ceramicists and the painters, largely men, who visited the Taller to learn the craft. 

At the helm of the Taller was a physician, Juan Miguel Rodríguez de la Cruz, who formed and fired the ceramics and hired mainly women, many of whom were trained at the prestigious Academia San Alejandro and other fine arts schools, to decorate the wares. Rebeca Robés Massés, Marta Arjona, María Elena Jubrías, Mirta García Buch, Amelia Peláez, and numerous others were key ceramicists at the Taller. 

Featuring nearly 150 vases, mugs, water jugs, murals, and plates drawn from premier private and gallery collections, The Lost Generation displays for the first time many of the Taller’s finest ceramics in conversation with dozens of paintings and sculptures by Peláez, Portocarrero, Lam, Martínez Pedro, Mariano, and others.