Hispanic Heritage Month 1999

Giulio V. Blanc papers, 1920-1995.

Photograph taken of an opening night party for the exhibition Cuban Artists of the XXth Century, Sept. 1993, at the home of Fernando Alvarez Perez.

Through 11 linear feet of Blanc's artists' files, exhibition files, subject files, interviews, and photographs, spanning the years 1920-1995, Blanc's papers provide a wealth of information not readily available on the subject of Cuban art and Latin American art history, and documentation on the work of many recent immigrant artists in the U.S. A finding aid to the collection is being prepared, and microfilm of the collection will be available for research and interlibrary loan within the next few months.

Blanc was born in Havana and emigrated to the United States in 1960 where he attended Harvard College and the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City. 1 A prolific writer of articles and catalog essays, Blanc became a leading authority on Latin American art, successfully establishing himself as a link between Cuban and Cuban-American artists and U.S. galleries and museums. He organized two significant exhibitions for Miami's Cuban Museum of Art and Culture, The Miami Generation (1983) and Amelia Peláez: A Retrospective (1988), and the celebrated Wifredo Lam and His Contemporaries (1991) for New York's Studio Museum in Harlem.

The artists' files Blanc compiled comprise the bulk (8 feet) of his papers, documenting nearly 300 artists with biographical material, letters, newspaper clippings, interviews, photographs, and exhibition announcements and catalogs. Among the artists represented are Carlos Alfonzo, Luis Cruz Azaceta, María Brito, Maria Martínez-Caña, Pablo Cano, Margarita Cano, Marío Carreño, Jorge Pérez Castaño, Miguel Cubiles, Ramon Carulla, Hernán Garcia, Antonio Gattorno, Wifredo Lam, Julio Larraz, Carlos Macía, Amelia Peláez, Enrique Riverón, Demi and Arturo Rodríguez, Gilberto Ruiz, Emilio Sanchez, Haydee and Sahara Scull, Juan Sí, José Gómez Sícre, Rafael Soriano, and César Trasobares.

"Mail art" Letter from Miguel Cubiles to "Julius Blank" covered with decals, 1981

Notable is Blanc's interview with art historian and curator José Gómez Sícre, founder and first director of the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C., (Organization of American States). Sícre describes his early career and involvement with acquisitions for the museum's permanent collection of Latin American art and his working relationship with Alfred H. Barr. Blanc also interviewed Elena Peláez de Medero, sister of Cuban painter Amelia Peláez. In addition to the interview, the papers include correspondence between Blanc and Elena Peláez as well as copies of rare 1930s and 1940s exhibition catalogs from Amelia Peláez's early career. These materials were sent to Blanc by Medero for his research on the 1988 exhibition on Amelia Peláez, the first U.S. retrospective of this important Cuban artist. Also available are rare French, German and Spanish newspaper clippings on Peláez dating back to the 1920s.

Illustrated letter from Enrique Riveron to Blanc, 1981

The files on Enrique Riverón (b. 1901), leader of the Cuban vanguardia, contain illustrated letters and greeting cards from Riveron addressed to Blanc and his parents, Baron Lodovico Blanc and María V. Blanc, prominent Miami collectors who left Cuba in 1960.2 Also found is an interview with Riverón . Published in the Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts in 1997, the interview reveals Riverón as a member of El Grupo de Montparnasse, a talented group of Cuban painters and writers living in the southern district of Paris at the height of the modern art movement in the 1920s. During the interview, Riverón presented Blanc with El Arte y El Amor en Montparnasse, Paris 1923-1930, a novel published in 1950 and dedicated and signed by the author, Armando Maribona. It uses the lives Montparnasse artists as a backdrop for a love story set in Paris. The papers include a photocopy of the book which carries the warning on the cover page "Impropio para Menores" [Inappropriate for minors] referring to the carousing artists' life depicted in Paris.

Following the Cuban revolution of 1959 and Castro's subsequent oppression of free speech, an overwhelming majority of artists fled the island, many of them choosing the U.S. as their second home. One particular group of artists who made their mark was the "Miami Generation". As children growing up in Castro's regime, these young artists were given as much free instruction and materials as their talents merited while they worked subsidized jobs in galleries, art schools or propaganda offices. They were educated to believe that an artist contributed to society's well being as much as a truck driver, mason, soldier or any other worker.
Pablo Cano, María Martínez Cañas, Mario Bencomo, María Brito, Carlos Macía, Arturo Rodríguez, and César Trasobares are part of this generation and address the pain of exile in their work while attempting to reconcile two cultural realities. Blanc's papers document the work of the "Miami Generation" artists throughout the voluminous artists' files.

Of special interest in the Blanc papers is extensive documentation (exhibition announcements, court orders, and press releases) of the controversy that surrounded Miami's Cuban Museum of Art and Culture in the late 1980s. In April 1988, a fund-raising auction at the 24-year-old ‘little Havana' institution resulted in heated disputes that escalated to violence and subsequent bombings. The works auctioned were by Cuban artists still living on the island and, therefore, considered supporters of the Communist regime; an idea that outraged many people in Miami's Cuban community. The incident intensified quickly and involved the U.S. Treasury and Justice Departments along with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses. The FBI impounded both the museum's collection and Ramón Cernuda's personal art collection, the museum vice-president who organized the auction. 3 Found among Blanc's papers is the ‘hours of operation' placard rescued from the bomb debris by artist Pablo Cano who dedicated it to Blanc with an inscription written on the back. Offering additional information on the subject are a number of letters received from artists and friends expressing discontent with the museum's state of affairs or gratitude for financial support by Blanc's parents during the museum's reconstruction. These provide remarkable insight into a relatively heterogeneous Cuban community and reflect an art historian's grasp of these pivotal events.

The Archives acquired the Giulio V. Blanc papers as part of its 1996 "Latino Art Documentation Project" in South Florida. Funded by the Smithsonian's Latino Pool Allocation Fund, the Archives conducted a nine-month survey of art-related primary source material in South Florida, including the areas of Miami, Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. The survey was conducted by Kaira Cabañas, former Archives intern, who uncovered numerous significant collections in private and public hands. As a result, the Archives acquired many gift and loan collections including those of Cundo Bermúdez, 1937-1975*; María Brito, 1980-1993; Margarita Cano, 1983-1985; Ramón Carulla, 1980-1995; Humberto Dionisio, 1950-1987; Ramón Guerrero, 1978-1993; Helen Kohen, 1985-1995; Carlos Macía, 1975-1994; Enrique Riverón, 1924-1994 and numerous others as well as oral history interviews.

*Dates indicate span dates of collections.

1. Blanc was pursuing a doctoral degree at the City University of New York before his premature death in 1995.