Havana opens new spaces for creativity on its 500th anniversary

Similar to an embryo that shows signs of impatience in the maternal cloister, what within a few months will be Creative Spaces does not wait for the builders to finish rehabilitating the beautiful art decó property that in the first half of the XX century occupied in Old Havana the pharmacy store La Reunión, to present itself as a meeting point for young artistic experimentation.

The celebration of the half millennium of the Cuban capital and the inexhaustible creativity of the specialists of the Office of the Historian of the City, supported by governments and NGOs of several European countries, encourage this haste; whose most recent evidence was the awarding there of the poster contest Havana -500 anniversary.

With a work in which, according to the jury, "the typography in its historical structures also represents a consensus between the recognizable and the particular" offering a faithful image of this moment, the novel designer Norberto Molina Martínez won the Prize of the contest, summoned on the occasion of the anniversary by the OHC and the CartelON Project, with the co-sponsorship of the Basque Agency for Development Cooperation and the NGO Kultura, Communication and Development (KCD), of the own Spanish autonomous community.

Among the fifteen finalists selected within the fifty proposals, mentions were also awarded to the posters conceived by Claudio Sotolongo, Gabriel Lara (Gabo) and Eric Silva, considered also worthy gifts to a city whose spirit will never languish, thanks to initiatives such as this.

Since it was created just three years ago, CartelON was defined as a program aimed at promoting silkscreen graphics in Cuba, a manifestation that experienced moments of glory on the island, mainly in the ICAIC poster. This project has corresponded the two public actions carried out to date in the property located at the intersection of Teniente Rey and Havana streets.

Inspired by the European Factories of Creation and with some common elements with the Cuban Art Factory, in what to be erected in buildings with previous uses and the experimental and multidisciplinary character of its proposals, the Center for creative spaces of the OHC has pursued with them to reveal its characterization, at the time of promoting itself among the new batches of artists and publics, before its official opening scheduled for next September.

Photos: Courtesy of the CartelON Project