The Salón de Mayo (May Salon) was an art exhibition held in

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

, in July 1967. It took its name from the

Salon de Mai The Salon de Mai (the '' May Salon'') is a group of French artists which formed in a café on the Rue Dauphine in Paris in 1943 during the German occupation of France.Ferrier, Jean-Louis. (Ed.) (1999) ''Art of the 20th Century''. Paris: Chene-Hache ...

, an artists collective founded during the

Nazi occupation of France The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zo ...

. It was organized by

Carlos Franqui Carlos Franqui (December 4, 1921 – April 16, 2010) was a Cuban writer, poet, journalist, art critic, and political activist. After the Fulgencio Batista coup in 1952, he became involved with the 26th of July Movement which was headed by Fidel ...

with the assistance of such artists as

Wifredo Lam Wifredo Óscar de la Concepción Lam y Castilla (; December 8, 1902 – September 11, 1982), better known as Wifredo Lam, was a Cuban artist who sought to portray and revive the enduring Afro-Cuban spirit and culture. Inspired by and in conta ...

, René Portocarrero,

Alexander Calder Alexander Calder (; July 22, 1898 – November 11, 1976) was an American sculptor known both for his innovative mobiles (kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents) that embrace chance in their aesthetic, his static "stabiles", and hi ...

, Joan Miró,

Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

. The exhibition presented works by more than a hundred artists and represented rival schools of twentieth-century art: early modernists (Picasso, Miro, Magritte); the next generation (Lam, Calder,

Jacques Hérold Jacques Hérold (born Herold Blumer; 10 October 191011 January 1987) was a prominent Surrealism, surrealist painter born in Piatra Neamț, Romania. Biography Considered one of the most important late-period Surrealism, Surrealist painters, Hér ...

, Stanley Hayter); and postwar (

Asger Jorn Asger Oluf Jorn (3 March 1914 – 1 May 1973) was a Danish painter, sculptor, ceramic artist, and author. He was a founding member of the avant-garde movement COBRA and the Situationist International. He was born in Vejrum, in the northwest c ...

, Antonio Saura, Jorge Soto). Lam wrote to Franqui in anticipation of the event of his hopes: Some artists were invited to create works in Cuba in the weeks preceding the exhibition, with those works donated to the Cuban government to form the nucleus of the collection of a contemporary art museum. The museum was never constructed. Collaborative engagement was a principle theme of the event. On 19 July 1967, more than eighty artists and writers contributed to a mural, ''Cuba colectiva'', in front of the Cuba Pavilion in Havana, adding either images or text inside spiral bands that circled outward from a central image of "rhomboid heads" by Lam. A Paris newspaper described the event: In Franqui's words the enterprise represented: The Surrealists had dreamed of "a revolutionary imagination that could support social change" and this event, in the estimation of one art historian, "delivered the opportunity for Surrealist adherents to participate satisfactorily–if only briefly–in an act of solidarity with an actual revolutionary regime ... that accommodated both sensuality and revolutionary rectitude." The radical poet

Alain Jouffroy Alain Jouffroy (11 September 1928 – 20 December 2015) was a French writer, poet and artist. Jouffroy was born near Parc Montsouris, Paris. He was the first advocate of an Art Strike and formed the L'Union des Ecrivains during the strikes of ...

wrote: The Salón was a unique event under a regime that, in the words of a writer who was later imprisoned, "used every imaginable pretext to keep culture on a short leash". As a demonstration of vigorous self-expression, the Salón de Mayo has also been interpreted as a rejection of the Soviet Union's approach to artistic endeavor, an assertion on the part of Communist Cuba of its independence from the Soviet model. Within Cuba, the Salón de Mayo represented the high point of free artistic expression. Some in Cuba's cultural establishment resented the influence of foreigners and visiting intellectuals, and they took measures soon after it against writers identified as dissidents. The Cuban government released a series of

commemorative stamps A commemorative stamp is a postage stamp, often issued on a significant date such as an anniversary, to honor or commemorate a place, event, person, or object. The ''subject'' of the commemorative stamp is usually spelled out in print, unlike defi ...

that depicted 25 of the works included in the show.

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Picture of participants
{{DEFAULTSORT:Salon de Mayo 1967 in art 1967 in Cuba Visual arts exhibitions Culture in Havana Surrealism Freedom of expression Public art International artist groups and collectives

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Further reading

External links