CUBA ¡PRESENTE! 
Cuban posters from the collection of Gerrie Casey and Paul Mishler 


January 6 – February 27, 2011

Cuban poster art, photography and movies will be featured in the months of January and February at Artpost. A vintage Cuban poster will be raffled off during the exhibit opening on January 7th, with the proceeds benefiting CUBAmistad, a Bloomington Indiana – Santa Clara Cuba sister city group.

South Bend residents Gerrie Casey and Paul Mishler will be exhibiting their collection of offset and silk screen posters from the hey-day of Cuba’s Poster Movement (1964-1980). Following the Cuban revolution, the poster became simultaneously, the preferred vehicle for mass education and a highly developed art form. From the 1960s-1980s, the best artists in the country – trained in a wide range of art styles — dedicated themselves to poster production. These posters are world renown for their use of bright colors, imaginative vision, ironic sensibilities and intense passion for justice. The work in the Casey-Mishler collection represents all four realms of Cuban poster production, including: Art and History, Film Posters for Cuba’s award-winning National Film Institute; Mass Education Campaigns; and International Solidarity with 3rd World revolutionary movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The posters were collected when Casey and Mishler worked in Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, a U.S.-based solidarity organization.

Artpost will also be showing two films about Cuba during the exhibit. The first, Kordavision, a documentary by American filmmaker Hector Sandoval, is about the Cuban photographer Alberto Diaz “Korda”, whose iconic photograph of Ernesto “Che” Guevara may be one of the most famous photographs of the 20th Century. Kordavision will be shown Sunday, Jan 23 at 2 pm. The second film, TBA, will be shown in February as part of Artpost’s Black History celebration.