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Announcement RChD: Creación y Pensamiento |Vol. 10 Nº 18| JUN 2025 | Dossier: The multiscalar. Deadline for full manuscript submission: December 31, 2024.
Memories of Cuban designMemories of Cuban Design: The EMPROVA and its Department of Projects and Designs
Authors
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Ana Sofía López Guerrero
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura, Ciudad de México, México
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6534-0394
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Marcos da Costa Braga
Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0978-2550
- Gladys Bitod Paláez Investigadora independiente, La Habana, Cuba
Abstract
Founded in 1974, the Empresa de Producciones Varias known as EMPROVA and its Department of Projects and Designs represent an important chapter in the history of Cuban design in the second half of the 20th century. The company brought together several ateliers that produced ceramic tableware, prints, textiles, lighting fixtures, furniture and various utilitarian items used in the interiors of hotels, hospitals, schools and homes, as well as Communist Party headquarters. The team of the Projects and Designs Department, led by María Victoria Caignet and Gonzalo Córdoba, aspired to a production that represented a front for import substitution, with proposals in line with the national context and a Cuban image that would dialogue with international design and modern language, and at the same time, responded to the socialist project. In this article, through interviews and research in archives and newspaper and magazine publications found at the Instituto Superior de Diseño Industrial and the José Martí National Library of Cuba in Havana, we delve into the history of EMPROVA and its Department of Projects and Designs.
