The city of Camagüey, recognized for its great artistic quality, is home to great personalities of Cuban culture, thus demonstrating a high level of development in each of the manifestations of art.
Art education is an element that has a great impact on the creation of art in each city. This aspect, in Camagüey, has had its ups and downs throughout its history; it manifests itself from the most individual examples to achieving intertwining the aspects of art in great academies.
In the first centuries of the history of artistic education in Camagüey, it was distributed among the sectors of society in a different way. The wealthiest families had private drawing and music classes, which were a mandatory requirement for them, mainly for women.
In some churches and large private schools, subjects of an artistic nature were taught as part of their study plan. From the point of view of the working and less favored classes, the development of some artistic ability was seen as a trade, on many occasions they were underestimated.
Lights of a period
During the nineteenth century, the first steps began to be taken in the country for the opening of great academies of arts. Under the support of the Friends of the Country Economic Society, the San Alejandro School of Painting and Sculpture was founded in 1818, which laid the foundations for future plastic academies that spread throughout the country.
At the town…
In Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe two institutions are also founded that, despite the fact that their main objective was not the artistic teaching of the population, they did influence it in a certain way; the Popular Society of Instruction and Recreation Santa Cecilia, and the Philharmonic Society of Puerto Príncipe. Both entities were dedicated to socially different audiences, but they managed to mobilize the population in pursuit of the extension of art, through music, declamation, literature, reading room, among other activities that encouraged the culture in the population.
In the 20th century, a more structured movement of artistic education began to take shape in the province. Some art academies are born that are decisive for its development.
Some of these academies were located in the houses of those who served as teachers and with a small format, on the other hand, a growing number gained format and managed to be legalized and recognized by the ruling governments about their existence.
They were founded in their great majority thanks to the interest and efforts of specialized personalities of Camagüey art at that time. Each of them developed a specific artistic aspect; there was still no format that would unify them all.
As early as 1936, the Ballet Academy was founded in the province, one of the pioneers of this decade. The merit falls in the name of the teacher Gilda Zaldívar Freyre, recognized as “the Initiator”, who was a disciple of Anna Pávlova, León Fokin and Love Kröhn, and will constitute a determining guide for future generations despite her short life.
The local coliseum was the space where most of the presentations of Gilda and her students took place. On December 3rd, 1937, the first presentation of this company was held at the Main Theater, which was recorded by means of a review in the newspaper “El Camagüeyano”.
Gilda’s legacy is continued by two greats of Camagüey ballet.
Her mark
Marta Matamoros Cordero created a new Ballet Academy in 1952. This dancer was part of the Alicia Alonso Ballet since its founding, a relationship that allowed the Camagüey Academy to become a branch of the Alicia Alonso Ballet School.
On the other hand, there is the work of Vicentina de la Torre Recio, who is trained within Gilda’s academy and created her academy in 1957 with an eminently popular character, in which she continues the pedagogical guidelines of Fernando Alonso.
After 1959 this school joined the new social process that was generated and that prohibited the teaching of private classes of any kind.
The Municipal Ballet School, unprecedented in the province, became the main quarry that made possible the foundation in 1967 of the Camagüey Ballet.
View from music
In terms of music, in this century there were several conservatories of small format and private ones. The work of the Conservatory of Music of Camagüey founded in 1936 by Luis Aguirre Orio is of great relevance. He taught in his own residence located at 112 Avellaneda Street. There was a national academic validity granted by the Ministry of Education at that time and he was affiliated to the Fine Arts Section of the Culture Management of the aforementioned ministry.
Its extensive training program offered classes for various instruments; musical subjects such as Solfeggio, Music Theory, Harmony, Composition, Counterpoint, Fugue and Instrumentation; Complementary subjects such as Aesthetics, Musical Forms, Languages, Chamber Music and instrumental ensembles; in addition to having some Specialized Courses.
This Conservatory constitutes in itself the most direct antecedent of any later experience of the same or similar sign in the city.
In the case of the teaching of the plastic arts, a phenomenon occurs that has its beginning and end in this period, specifically in the first years of the second half of the 20th century; the foundation of the José Martí Plastic Arts Academy.
The process of its founding brought with it several issues against it, such as that they were a space that would corrupt the good customs of Camagüey society with bad vices and a libertine life. Since 1950, the idea of founding this academy began to take hold.
The negotiations for its foundation began in Havana under the actions of Manuel Roldán Capaz, Lorenzo Romero Arciaga, Jorge Arche Silva among others; and in Camagüey it was led by Dr. Adolfo Meruelo Torriente, Jorge Santos Díaz and Esther del Pozo Hernández, as part of a group that supported this cause.
Its foundation did not take place until February 4th, 1952, in the halls of the Benemérita Sociedad Popular Santa Cecilia, and the institutionalization by the government of Fulgencio Batista under Decree 804 of March 21st, 1953, published in the Official Gazette of April 25th.
Paradoxically, it was local authorities and merchants who made the greatest contribution to the center. His study plan was based on the one created in San Alejando, which continued to be a benchmark.
This study plan included an elementary level of two years and a higher level in four years. This center moved through various places in the city, including private homes of teachers themselves.
In 1959, through the official decree, the public standards for the education system were abolished, for this reason it was officially extinguished.
However, to this extent, the local authorities, through their Provincial Department of Education, allowed them to continue to function in respect of the work done by students and teachers. Then, through the Law of the Nationalization of Education of June 6th, 1961, the school began the journey until its last steps.
The revolution
The revolutionary triumph constitutes a before and after in this aspect of Cuban society as in many others. Transformations such as the decree of the end of public boards in 1959 and the Law of Nationalization of Education in 1961; On the one hand, some institutions of this type closed, and others are transformed and continue to work under these new laws.
This transformative time creates a space of informative ambiguity about the date of the first artistic academy in Camagüey that brought together all the arts.
This article itself was at first to honor an alleged founding date of the Camagüey Art Academy, on April 19th, 1963, of which no tangible references have been found in any of the consulted bibliographies, nor in the interviews carried out with specialists on the subject such as the writer and researcher Jorge Santos Caballero and the MSc. María Mercedes García Vega, director of the Vicentina de la Torre Academy of Arts.
Although the revolutionary government promoted artistic education with foundations of art academies throughout the country since the first years of the Revolution, in Camagüey the date most collated and accepted is in the year 1967. This marks the foundation of the academy that in 2002 assumed the name of Vicentina de la Torre and that is how it is known to this day.
Since its foundation, this school has varied the fields of the art that it promotes, but it has always remained a significant reference in the province and in the country.
Although a date as important as the founding of a powerful institution such as the Academy of Arts is not sufficiently documented in terms of a specific day, the importance rises in the diverse artistic development of Camagüey in its historical evolution from previous centuries to date.
Bibliography
Archivo del periódico Adelante: Ejemplares desde 1961 hasta 1963.
Cepero Estrada, L. (2014). Memorias del Ballet de Camagüey. Editorial Ácana. Camagüey. Cuba.
Santos Caballero, J. (2020). Entre esperanzas y desventajas: la Escuela Provincia de Artes Plásticas José Martí, de Camagüey (1952-1962). Editorial Ácana. Camagüey. Cuba.
Translated by Aileen Álvarez García
