"ISLA JUDIA"
(Jewish Island)
By F. Lennox Campello
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From the "Cuba Series" started in the early 1970s.
This painting was done while the artist was a student at the University of Washington School of Art (1977-1981). The work honors the nearly one million Jews from Europe and the Middle East who found refuge in Cuba over the centuries and had a profound impact on Cuban culture.
It honors Cubans of Jewish ancestry. While legend has it that the first Jews arrived with the early Spanish settlers, and Jews have always migrated to Cuba in the past, the bulk of the Jewish migration to Cuba was in the early 20th century, as they escaped persecution of Jews from the Ottoman empire in the early 1920s, and later from Europeans before and during the Second World War, with immigrants arriving mostly from Germany and Poland. By 1959 there were 15,000 Jews in Havana alone, and there were five active synagogues in the city. After the Communist takeover, nearly all Cuban Jews escaped, and now estimates show only about 1500 Jewish Cubans in the island.
"Cuba: Isla Judia (Jewish Island)"
Watercolor on Paper, c. 1981
5 x 9 inches
