Cuban artistry is a diverse cultural blending of American, African and European aesthetic design showing the contrasting population make-up of Cuba. Cuban artists embraced the European modernist movement and the 1920-1940 era witnessed an increase in Cuban modernist movements; these movements were marked by a mixture of modern esthetic styles. Some of the more celebrated 20th century Cuban artists tended to come from the early part of the 20th century (for instance Wifredo Lam).

Arguably the most well-known piece of art to come out of Cuba was THAT photo of Che Guevara (by Mr Alberto Korda) which ended up being one of the most noted photos of the 20th century.

The indigenous Cuban art cause gained momentum after the opening of the the art academy (San Alejandro) back in 1818, which was constructed to gratify the European penchant of the middle class population of Cuba. In the late 1800s, landscape paintings dominated the art movement of Cuba and classicism dominated as the main art genre.

Nonetheless, the Vanguardia Cuban contemporary artists of the 1920s had disapproved the theoretical conventions of Cuba’s national art academy. During their genesis, numerous artists had lived in Paris, where they studied and ingested the founding rules of surrealism, cubism, and modernist primitivism. They returned to Cuba dedicated to new artistic methods and were motivated to fuse this new aesthetic leaning with a Cuban influence. The vanguardia artists achieved global acclaim in 2003 with the Modern Cuban Painting show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.