The emblematic image used for this exhibition is the boxing prize belt by Alejandro Lopez.
It sports a portrait of Jose Marti to the right of a central collage of fragmented and faded images of faces and interiors encircled by the words Oro De Cuba (Cuban Gold).
It's an apt metaphor for the wealth of punchy graphic visions on show, which begin outside the gallery itself.
The casual passer-by on the pavement is ambushed by images filling the floor-to-ceiling windows, creating a symbiotic link between street and exhibition space.
Inside, the striking first impression is that the works are entirely figurative. As curator Sandra Ramos explains, "Cuban artists trust it as the best language for maintaining a dialogue with the people. We are both engaged in a permanent debate, literally inseparable."
No art for art's sake here, then.
She explains that there's a new generation of artists in their late twenties and early thirties on the island whose perceptions are very different from those of the legendary film-poster designers of the 1970s.
"It's perhaps sad that this legacy is no longer a source of inspiration," she says. "Cuba has changed too. We have all moved on, for better or worse."
She points to a series of six identical "Turin shrouds" with the image of the artist as Che Guevara by Jose Angel Toirac, which he poignantly calls "exhumations."
"Che is still very important to our generation," she stresses. "His idealism and ultimate sacrifice continue to convince." But she adds that the next generation lacks this conviction and is more self-centred and pragmatic.
The Higher Institute of Arts in Havana is Cuba's only art school at university level and it's where most of the creative ferment evidenced in these images has been generated.
In 1996 this led to the first nationwide La Huella Multiple (LHM - "The Multiple Print") which happens every three years. This year is its sixth incarnation.
LHM's aim is to bring together the best graphic works produced in Cuba from established and emerging artists and develop the concept of multiple media, Ramos explains. "It ventures beyond traditional printmaking and incorporates differing genres such as photography, performance and installations."
It's a project which is entirely self-financing and the mark of its success rests with LHM's international profile. These include major exhibitions in Austin in the US, Madrid and Zurich. And it has been regularly invited to take part in the prestigious Havana Biennial.
The artists on show are intrinsically embedded in today's Cuban reality. Their work ranges from poetic introspection to the highly political and quasi-activist.
Formally, these are practitioners at the top of their game and the unconstrained imagination on view is engaging and provocative.
In Catharsis, Ibrahim Miranda displays the zest of a Baudelaire or a French Situationist when he traces in the cartography of cities hidden animal shapes - the seahorse of Dublin, the tortoise of Paris or the dolphin of Sao Paulo, evocative of the talismanic Nasca line creatures of Peru.
There are delightful prints by Angel Ramirez, the much-admired professor of the Higher Institute of Arts in the Cuban capital, who tutored many of the younger artists on show.
They ridicule the social traditions of Spanish and French colonialism as well as ecclesiastical pretension.
Six chopped-off heads of "worthies" - as if torn out of some ancient almanach of the nobility - form a tableau that might well be lauding the Haitian revolution of 1791.
Blood spurts from their decapitated rolling heads, an eloquent and salutary reminder of the need to resist all oppression.
"Many a truth is told in jest" best describes the delicate, perceptive images of curator Sandra Ramos.
She probes Cuban reality by using simple forms to shape engaging narratives.
Reminiscent of collages or even cartoons they lucidly articulate her line of philosophical inquiry.
Ramos often appears in her own work as a leitmotiv girl in a pioneer uniform of white blouse and red skirt with trademark braces.
In her diptych The Relay, Columbus passes on a baton in the shape of Cuba to Uncle Sam who in turn hands it to Bobo (The Thick One) representing the national bourgeoisie.
Next in turn is Lenin who chases the elusive personage of Liborio from Cuban popular mythology in the dark. Ramos's alter ego waits apprehensively at the last changeover.
Liborio, created by the writer Victor de Landaluce at the end of the 19th century, is a peasant wit, fixer and conjurer.
When facing difficulties Cubans will often cheer one another up by saying "Worry not, Liborio will sort it out."
It's a blunt but amusing critique of the counterproductive practice of the Soviet Union when it imposed its political and economic model on other countries in a patronising and doctrinaire manner, with scant regard for local circumstance or realities.
Other images on show represent a poke in the eye to Barack Obama's paranoid advisers and the UN-condemned blockade that continues to make life so difficult for all Cubans, including these artists.
The topicality and formal vibrancy of these works, brimming with joie de vivre, is eloquent testimony to the unquestionable spiritual freedom these artists enjoy.
And they continue to make their mark internationally including, paradoxically, in the US.
As London Print Studio director John Phillips confirms, "anyone who visits Cuba will find that there is an exciting art scene buzzing with ideas and it's therefore doubly important that this exhibition, the first ever in Britain, has been assembled by a leading artist and curator working on the island itself."
If you like Cuban music, now you have the images to go with it.
Highly recommended.
Runs until May 28. Opening times: (020) 8969-3247. Works, on sale at reasonable prices, can be viewed at: www.avantarte-cuba1.com
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