Cuban Caricature and Culture: The Art of Massaguer

In this photograph taken at the end of the Great Depression, Massaguer sports a straw hat and walking stick. He had already depicted himself in the same costume for a calling card in the early 1920s, when he sought to introduce himself to New York society.

In 1923, Massaguer created a calling card, introducing himself to the New York social set as “young, single and easy to look at.” When he arrived in 1924, however, he was no longer single. The wealthy publisher and his bride, a niece of former Cuban president Mario García Menocal, spent their honeymoon at the Waldorf‐ Astoria, and he established a studio in the city.

When his family returned to Cuba after the war of independence, Massaguer’s parents believed their son might benefit from an American education. While attending a military academy in upstate New York, young Massaguer wrote letters home complete with illustrations of famous sites and persons he encountered in New York City.

In this self-caricature, Massaguer depicts life as a carousel ride, with an angel hovering over one shoulder and the devil over the other.

Although Carteles proved more popular and long‐lived, Social best represents Massaguer’s artistic and cultural influence in Cuba. The bellboy became one of his iconic tropes, appearing in many magazine illustrations and tourism promotion materials.

Aimed at middle‐class Cubans and offering news, cinema and theater reviews, and sports reporting, Carteles highlighted the artwork of the island’s best artists and illustrators on its covers. It achieved the largest circulation of any daily or weekly in Latin America.

Massaguer’s early covers for El Figaro reflect some of his lasting concerns as an illustrator and caricaturist. One pokes fun at American tourists well before Cuba became the premier destination for vacationing Americans in the 1920s.

Massaguer rarely caricatured women, preferring to make idealized illustrations of young models. Many covers also lampooned pretentious politicians and celebrities.

While some of Massaguer’s work made light of the New Deal, other illustrations championed key programs like the National Recovery Administration (NRA) and depicted its opponents as self-destructive individualists.

Massaguer produced this center-page spread depicting President Roosevelt and other world leaders and celebrities ushering in the new year with a parade.

Producing the cover art for a special Havana issue of Life magazine, Massaguer used the Cuban flag as a backdrop and represented Cuba as a woman wearing a traditional hoop skirt with a modern Art Deco pattern.

Massaguer exhibited art highlighting Cuban culture at New York’s Delphic Studios, including this famous drawing depicting his countrymen engaged in the national pastime of dominoes.

In the 1920s and 30s, the rumba was popularized in the U.S. as a foxtrot danced to Latin music. This painting, which was exhibited in New York City, shows an Afro-Cuban dancer set against a banana tree, emphasizing the tropical, African origins of the dance.

Massaguer’s main contribution to the Art Deco movement in Cuba was his promotion of the “modern woman” or flapper.

In this cover design by Massaguer, a modern flapper unmasks and reveals herself at a ball.

During Massaguer’s early stays in New York, he drew inspiration from the American artist Charles Dana Gibson’s popularization of the image of the late Victorian debutante with his “Gibson Girls.” An advocate of modernism, Massaguer made the “modern woman” the focus of his female portraits.

In the first year of publishing Social, Massaguer introduced an illustrated feature, captioned “Massa‐Girls,” a play on both the sound of his surname and on the term “masa”—a crude slang word referring to women’s bodies.

This hand-drawn sketch by the artist demonstrates his interest and skill in capturing the short cut style of hair popular with young women of the twenties.

This original watercolor of Diana, the goddess of the hunt, depicts the classical deity as a young woman with a fashionable, modern haircut. The image was reproduced as a cover design for Massaguer’s Social magazine.

An ardent supporter of Cuba’s tourism industry, Massaguer used the iconic bellboy popularized in his illustrations for Social to promote the island as a friendly and welcoming vacation destination.

Using a fan motif, Massaguer depicted the multitude of activities awaiting American tourists in Cuba.

During the era of U.S. prohibition, thirsty Americans flocked to the island, where alcoholic beverages were legal. Even after the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, tourists still went to Sloppy Joe’s for a drink and photograph at the famous bar.

Massaguer depicted carnival and parades in many of his illustrations and caricatures, picturing historical figures, character types, cultural stereotypes, and famous individuals.

Even after the tourist trade declined during the Great Depression, Massaguer continued to promote travel to Cuba in the 1930s, as with this cover illustration for a promotional brochure distributed at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. He also painted a mural in the Cuban pavilion depicting world leaders and celebrities gazing at a Cuban rumba dancer, but it was painted over after a Cuban official claimed it might cause offense with the American public.

Massaguer created many large caricature cut-outs of renowned Cuban and international celebrities, some of which served as decoration for the walls of Club Casablanca.

Many Cuban caricaturists, Massaguer included, were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, or involuntary exile for ridiculing powerful political figures. This did not deter the artist from targeting presidential contenders in 1920.

Soon after Gerardo Machado was elected president of Cuba, Massaguer celebrated his victory on the cover of Social. He contrasted a smiling portrait of the new president with his scowling, drooling predecessor, Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso.

President Machado reneged on his promise to serve for a single term and responded to protest with bloody repression. Massaguer penned satirical attacks against Machado’s abuses of power, joining the growing camp of dissidents and exiles.

Massaguer created a series of illustrated postcards caricaturing noted Cuban figures he admired. Dr. Enrique J. Varona, poet and founder of the periodical Revista Cubana, was the first Cuban intellectual to speak out against the excesses of the Gerardo Machado regime.

In his role as a tourism promoter, Massaguer was often at hand when dignitaries and celebrities arrived at the airport or docks of Havana harbor, pulling out his sketch pad and scribbling caricatures of the visitors.

Massaguer’s caricature of Walt Disney depicted him surrounded by animals, though he prudently included none of the litigious cartoonist’s most famous characters.

Walt Disney and Massaguer met at the Burbank Studio in Hollywood, California after the latter had won the Julio Gaunaurd Award, named for the founder and editor of the humorous weekly, Karikato.

Massaguer’s caricatures of American public figures reflect his ambivalence about the United States. He admired the country as a model of modern efficiency, but also resented American interference in Cuban affairs.

Massaguer spent much of the 1930s in New York as a political exile. His caricatures from this time express early enthusiasm for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, which aimed to fight the Great Depression, and for his diplomatic initiatives under his Good Neighbor policy.

Massaguer was back in Cuba during the war years and made many caricatures in support of the Allied fight against Fascism and Nazism, as in this holiday Esso gasoline advertisement made in the aftermath of victory.

Towards the end of his long career, Massaguer self‐ published an illustrated autobiography reproducing some of his most popular caricatures.

Following the overthrow of President Fulgencio Batista in 1959 by Fidel Castro and his allies, Massaguer published this book providing the first caricatures of the revolutionaries. Many of the advertisements within depict them enjoying American brands like Coca-Cola, Buick, and Jell-O—soon to become off-limits in Cuba after Castro cut ties with the United States. The last of Massaguer’s popular magazines, Carteles, ceased distribution in 1960, and he would finish out his days quietly working in Cuba’s National Archives