Afrocuba Works on Paper, 1968-2003.

Afrocuba Works on Paper, 1968-2003

Judith Bettelheim

San Francisco State University Gallery

San Francisco, CA

dist. by U. of Washington Press

PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145-5096

www.washington.edu/uwpreess

ISBN 0295984767 $24.95 88 pp.

Bettelheim has put together a gallery of art works by 25 noted younger, contemporary, Cuban artists. The closing section is on Belkis Ayon, who died in 1999. A representative work of each of the artists faces a one-page essay on him or her. Many of the pictured works are from the past year or two. The oldest are from the 1970s. It's an eye-opening catalog displaying the liveliness and imagination in Cuban art works on paper over the past 30 years. One sees that Cuban art has not been retarded by U. S. efforts to ostracize Cuban under the Castro regime; and that as far as its art goes, Cuba reflects the latest in modern and contemporary art with respect to content and style, and in some cases political and social perspective. The Afrocuban works on paper contain all of the irony, postmodern collage, and abstract and biological forms of art of any country, while at the same time reflect earthy African roots and the social tensions and artifices of Cuba. A professor of art history at San Francisco State U., Bettelheim area of concentration is the African Diaspora.