from private collections in Washington alone is a fitting tribute to the quality and vitality of this art.

The exhibition ably covered the scope of recent Cuban painting. The Women of Ponce de León, lost in an impressionist mist of dull browns and gleaming lights, is a typical example of the work of the master of Camagüey, a strangely original and mystic painter who has long represented a break with official painting in Cuba. Another great rebel in Cuban painting, Amelia Peláez, returned to her native country in 1934 after many years' residence in Europe. Her strongly patterned still lifes and figure piecesinfluenced originally by the work of Picasso's semi-abstract period-met with much opposition in Habana, where they were little understood and less admired. In the intervening years her work has become more and more personal, permeated by the hot, clear colors of Cuba and by the exotic patterns of its stainedglass windows, its tropic fruits and flowers, which in her paintings are leaded together with strong black lines that define

ists, such as Carreño, Mariano, and Martínez Pedro, rose in a revolt against the official academy. Carreño studied in Mexico and Paris and, after passing through a long succession of phases, seems to be finding himself now in a semiabstract style, the colors of which are becoming more sober, the textures richer, with only an occasional gleam of the hot color and riotous action of his Cuban period, when after years of classicism in Europe he returned to his country to find the release he needed in its color and fire. If the new work lacks the warmth of the old, it has gained in control and mastery, and in the weight of somber color against brilliant light. Mariano's Cocks, battling in a welter of reds and yellows, have the strength and vitality of which this artist seems to be a master. Even his gouache, Cathedral of La Habana (also in the exhibition), though lightly touched, has his typical vigor. The other extreme was represented by the finely detailed pencil drawing of Martínez Pedro, a work of 1941, when his lyrical realism had not yet given way to. his present angular and tortured abstractions.

Three paintings by Cundo Bermúdez were included in the showing: Interior, an oil of 1946 in his early, more realistic style, using bright colors and gay pattern; and two later gouaches which are semi-abstract and loosely painted in dull grays and greens. Enríquez shows a high-keyed canvas, Silhouette, with transparent, overlapping forms and quietly humorous subject matter. Felipe Orlando had two still lifes in the exhibition, both executed with a palette knife. The Fruit is particularly handsome, with heavy, stained-glass colors, somewhat reminiscent of Peláez. Portocarrero's watercolor, Interior, is lightly painted and impressionist in style, while his Crucifixion, an oil, is somber and moody. Victor Manuel's picture called Women's

Heads reflects his quiet, rather personal technique.

The new generation was shown in the work of Osvaldo, Diago, Carmelo, and Girona. Osvaldo was represented by a Matanzas landscape in gouache and by a still life, Fish and Flowers, a luminous oil painted with a palette knife in heavy impasto. Diago's charming Flowers of 1943 give little hint of the strongly distorted figures which he was to paint in oil only two years later. Carmelo exhibited two drawings, one a classic rendering of a fellow artist, finely detailed and beautifully executed, the second, a doubleimage line drawing of great vitality. Girona, older than the other three, until recently worked as a sculptor. His figure piece Woman reflects the classic period of Picasso in its simplified forms and sculptural weight.

It will be interesting to follow the progress of these new artists as their work develops and becomes more personal. The return of one of Cuba's finest painters, Wilfredo Lam, to his native country prior to the war, has brought with it a wealth of ideas for the younger artists, and his influence, and through him, the everpresent influence of the great Picasso, is bound to affect the work of the younger painters.

A great deal of criticism has been leveled at North and South American artists alike for their dependence upon the recent technical discoveries of the School of Paris. Vociferous groups of Indigenist painters have sought to establish schools

ROBERTO DIAGO: FLOWERS, GOUACHE,

1943

FIDELIO PONCE: ST. IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA, OIL, 1940

of purely local painting, free from "foreign" influence. That this indigenismo often ends in a self-conscious and overdecorative impressionism-equally European in inspiration is only too often. evident. It would seem as useless for a modern artist to ignore the technical developments of the School of Paris as for an inventor to refuse to be influenced by discoveries in his own field merely because they were not native. The important thing is the assimilation of outside influence and its integration in the personal discoveries of the artist. Peláez, Víctor Manuel, Carreño, Lam, Enríquez and Girona all studied in Paris, and have

inevitably added its highly sophisticated. accents to their own Cuban language.

But the language is Cuban. One has only to visit Cuba to find how passionately, deeply Cuban the speech of the modern group is. Space and air, light and brilliant color, the sudden gleaming trunks of the palm trees rising unregimented in flat, green fields, the tiny farms, the crowded streets of the towns, the stainedglass windows of the houses-brilliant against the sun by day, brilliant against the lamps by night-all are here. The feeling for Cuba, and love of it, sing in the work of the Cubans, in rich strong colors and in bold patterns.

Ar eight o'clock the Amazon sun was already dissolving the early morning freshness and foreshadowing the white heat which would grip Santarém at noonday. The familiar daily routine was well under way with black-skinned Rufina bustling about on the back porch which served as kitchen and José Maria bringing water in kerosene tins from the river. A clap-clap of hands at the gate announced two visitors in the customary Brazilian fashion.

Two Brazilian neighbors were paying an early morning call. As we were sipping black coffee, an indispensable gesture of hospitality, one of my visitors said casually, "My mother came from Louisiana." I nearly dropped my coffee cup! To all appearances she was as Brazilian as Car

men Miranda, though in a less spectacular fashion. Then and there I learned part of the story of the trek made from the United States to Brazil by a large group of Southerners in the post-Civil War period. Later I pieced out more of the story.

In the confusion and humiliation following the Civil War there were many in the South who desired to go to a new land. The popular De Bow's Review published reports of a committee sent to Brazil to investigate possibilities of immigration. Rich and fertile lands, healthful living conditions, and the willingness of Dom Pedro II, Emperor of Brazil, to help newcomers were listed. New Orleans newspapers at the same time published glowing accounts by Major Hastings, one of