Cuba holds a unique place in world history, and in our imaginations, but we've known little about the island nation's visual arts until the arrival of this dynamic joint production of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Cuba's Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and Fototeca de Cuba. Incisive essays, useful time lines, and 450 ravishing illustrations chronicle a century and a half of Cuban drawing, painting, graphic art, and photographs. Cuban art thrives on diversity and a transcendent belief in life for life's sake. From romantic landscapes and sensual portraits to the complex paintings of Wilfredo Lam and the powerful political art of Alberto Pena and Marcelo Pogolotti, Cuban painting draws on influences African, Caribbean, and European to respond to conquest and war, the tyranny of poverty and ideology. Gorgeous art deco magazine covers embody a sense of hope and love of glamour, while in-your-face posters protest a far more complicated reality, and potent photographs document high-rolling nightlife, the fervor of the revolution, and sweet and painful moments on the streets and in the countryside. This momentous, dazzling volume interweaves history, biography, and artistic expression to explicate Cuba's distinctive vibrancy and glorious creativity.