 These painters' criollo images, for all their differences, shared a modern primitivist view of Cuba as an exotic, timeless, rural land inhabited by simple and sensual, if also sad and melancholic people.Although rooted in Cuba's natural and cultural environment, the vision of "lo cubano" (the Cuban) was far removed from contemporary historical reality.Instead it was based on an ideal conception of patria that had been a component of Cuban nationalism and art since the nineteenth century.