 In 1997, Sandra Levinson, executive director of the Center for Cuban Studies Art Space in New York City, organized "Naïve Art in Cuba", a first-of-its-kind exhibition at the Metropolitan Arts Center featuring the art of fourteen Cuban naïve artists, in addition to the eight members of the "Grupo Bayate" artist's collective from Mella, Santiago de Cuba.These artists were discovered during a 1996 trip to Cuba by Levinson, Olga Hirshhorn, and others, who crisscrossed the island searching for examples of this style of art, of which so little had previously been seen in the United States

The unofficial head of "Grupo Bayate" is Luis Rodríguez Arias (born 1950), a baker by profession.He is known as "el maestro" to differentiate him from his son, artist Luis Rodríguez Ricardo (born 1966), who calls himself "el estudiante".