HAVANA -- For the first time since Cuba's 1959 communist revolution, US artists have launched a show in the country's capital aimed at bridging a gap separating Cuba from the United States.

The exhibition that opened Saturday under the title "Chelsea visits Havana" -- after the famed New York art district -- displays 39 works of art by 33 US artists from 28 New York art galleries, according to National Art Museum curator Abelardo Mena.

"It is the biggest exhibition by US art galleries in Cuba," since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, says Havana Biennial organizer Alberto Magnan, who left Cuba when he was five years old and now owns an art gallery in Chelsea.

"I hope it's the first step toward US-Cuban relations," Magnan said, adding the event took two and a half years to organize.

The exhibit, which altogether involves more than 200 artists from some 40 countries, and will run through May 17.

The works displayed at the exhibit represent a wide range of views. Some make references to the history of the United States, notably the war in Iraq. Others focus on Cuba and its past, including the famous portrait Cuban Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara made to look like a jigsaw puzzle, from which it is very hard to conclude whether it is about to be finished or taken apart.

"One can see the difference from the Cuban art, which is more linked to tradition, to the collective identity," explains Mena. "American art is more individualistic."

"Visual art can be interpreted in different ways", cautiously comments Cuban art lover Antonio Reyes, standing in front of a painting by Walton Ford.

The painting shows a macaw parrot, an extinct species in Cuba, which has somehow managed to survive and, borrowing a phrase from the father of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, happily proclaims that "history will vindicate" him.

The favorite piece of Reyes, who came to the exhibit with his adolescent son, is a "make-believe" nuclear missile launch site.

"This reminds us of the Cold War, of something that is well known" in Cuba, which in those years was an ally of the now defunct Soviet Union.

The young creator of this engineering marvel, Doug Young, said he was "delighted" to participate in this first exhibit in Cuba, which has lived under an American trade embargo for 47 years. The embargo forbids American citizens to visit Cuba as tourists.

However, 15 American artists and gallery owners did come to the island, according to Magnan.

At the same time, Japanese artist Setsuko Ono, sister of John Lennon's widow Yoko Ono, was not able to come because she lacked authorization from authorities in the United States where she lives, according to the official Cuban newspaper Granma.

Artist Duke O'Reilly, 36, who made a film about a fictitious Saint Patrick's Day parade in the streets of Old Havana, says "it is impossible to organize such an exhibit without slipping into politics.

"But art is what brings people closer, and this is the reason why this exhibit is very important, especially at this moment," when US President Barack Obama favors relaxing the Cuban embargo, he points out.

Art work circulates here freely, not being subject to restrictions imposed by the embargo, which is increasingly challenged in the United States.

"The United States does business with China and Communist Vietnam," notes Magnan, who hopes to be able to organize a similar exhibit next year in Chelsea and invite Cuban artists to participate.