Revolution of Forms: Cuba's Forgotten Art Schools

In These Times
Cuba's National Art Schools, commissioned in 1961 by Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, are striking architectural examples of the Revolution's early idealistic promise-and its later Sovietized ossification. The sensuous buildings were disavowed as bourgeois in 1965, and abandoned to the jungle. Interest in the schools has revived in recent years, through, and efforts to rehabilitate them are underway.


Juliet Barclay, The Architectural Review, April 1999
Loomis poignantly charts the fledgling Revolution's attempt at a fresh definition of Cubanidad and its suffocation by Soviety centralization...Rigorously researched, elegantly written, and sensitively illustrated, the book is imbued, through the beauty and strangeness of its story, with the flavour of a magic realist novel.


Book Description
"A revolution of forms is a revolution of essentials." --José Martí, Cuban intellectual and independence leader Although the current surge of interest in Cuba has extended to that country's architecture, few know that the most outstanding architectural achievement of the Cuban Revolution stands neglected just outside Havana. The Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Art Schools), constructed from 1961 to 1965, were the result of an educational program initiated by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara soon after the Revolution of 1959. The architects they commissioned created an organic complex of brick and terra-cotta Catalan vaulted structures that reflected the optimism and exuberance of the period. The schools attempted to reinvent architecture, just as the Revolution hoped to reinvent society. However, even before construction was completed, the schools fell out of official favor and were subjected to an attack that resulted in their subsequent "disappearance." An ideological campaign branded them politically incorrect, a bourgeois luxury that was not in keeping with the Revolution. The buildings fell into disuse and, abandoned to the jungle, were literally overgrown. Now, almost 40 years later, Cuba is beginning to recognize and reclaim these significant works of architecture. Revolution of Forms investigates the history and politics surrounding the creation of these structures as well as their subsequent abandonment. The text is accompanied by archival photographs, plans, and images of the present condition of these structures.


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Cuba's National Art Schools, commissioned in 1961 by Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, are striking architectural examples of the Revolution's early idealistic promise-and its later Sovietized ossification. The sensuous buildings were disavowed as bourgeois in 1965, and abandoned to the jungle. Interest in the schools has revived in recent years, through, and efforts to rehabilitate them are underway.


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