Three Essays on Design

摘要

Almost thirty years ago, I wrote a piece for the Havana magazine Cuba international entitled "La belleza de todos los dias" ("The Beauty of the Everyday"). It turned out to be the first major essay on a new form of visual art produced in Cuba, one with scarcely any national precedents. This new art was the eruption of an avant-garde output, mainly in posters and billboards. In a way, it was as original as the initial modern painters had been in Cuba during the 1920s. If those painters, some of whom were still active during the 1960s, had rebelled against the academic, outdated ways of painting, the designers would have had to start with practically no antecedents in Cuban art. Up to 1959, posters and billboards usually were imported, mostly from the United States, together with the merchandise they promoted.