“Como en Viet Nam,” ca. 1970
 
Retrospectives on communist art and design are often dominated by some pretty inaccessible (and sometimes downright godawful) aesthetics. For example, many people find the grey boxes of GDR architecture a bit alienating, and while I personally adore it for kitsch value, most folks don’t dig on Socialist Realism paintings, as all that beatific portraiture of Stalin can get overwhelmingly corny. Dictators and stark buildings are not however, the whole and sum of communist aesthetics. There has been a lot of exoteric art produced in the name of the workers state, and with his unmistakable saturated colors and revolutionary tableaux, René Mederos was one such propagandist of the people.

Born in 1933, self-taught Cuban artist Felix René Mederos Pazos began his career at a Havana print shop when he was only 11 years old. By his mid-twenties he was Chief Designer for the big Cuban television station, and in 1964 he started making propaganda posters as head of a design team. In 1969 Mederos was sent to Vietnam to paint the war alongside the Vietnamese communists that were fighting it. Despite the brutality and violence he witnessed, Mederos often produced alluring, joyful images, a direction that some Cubans felt wasn’t dark and/or anti-American enough.

Mederos actually returned to Vietnam in 1972, and though he also did series on Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution, Vietnam remains his most famous subject, and a major touchstone in Cuban graphic design.
 

1969
 

“Como en Viet Nam, Mes de la Mujer Vietnamita” (Month of the Vietnamese Woman), ca. 1970
 

More Mederos after the jump…

Cheburashka toy

Cubans in their forties and fifties may not have vintage Disney toys from the 1960’s and 1970’s or boxed sets of every Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, but chances are they may still have a Bolek and Lolek toy or book somewhere. And they’re probably downloading hours worth of other old cartoons from the Soviet era.

Following the Cuban Revolution in 1959 state television ran cartoons from Bulgaria, East Germany, Poland (Bolek and Lolek), Hungary (Gustavus), and the Soviet Union (Mashinka and the Bear, Ny, pogodi!) . A lot of these cartoons did not have dialogue, preventing the need for dubbed audio. 

Following the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 Warsaw Pact cartoons were no longer shown in Cuba, but there was a generation of young adults with fond memories of them.

A graphic designer, Darwin Fornes, started a small business in Havana this year, which he called Chamakovich, and printed up 300 T-shirts featuring his favorite cartoon characters from his ‘80s childhood. Despite the dire Cuban economy, his first run sold out almost immediately. Darwin told La Jiribilla that he used grayscale for the images of Bolek and Lolek for added authenticity: most Cubans had black-and-white televisions well into the ‘90s.

Here is a selection of the quirky and adorable cartoons that inspired Fornes’ T-shirts:

Bolek and Lolek (Poland):

Mashenka (Little Masha) and the Bear (U.S.S.R.):

More Soviet-era cartoons after the jump…

 
Wow! Colorful and brilliant images of Cuban life and architecture by photographer Jeffrey Milstein. I just can’t get over how amazing these are. Truly top-notch work in my opinion. 

Check out Jeffrey Milstein’s website to view Cuba 1 and Cuba 2—it’s worth it.
 

 

 
More photos after the jump…

 
According to The Telegraph, some residents of Guant?ɬ