José Bedia Cuban, 1959

Few Cuban artists have developed a body of work as coherent and original as that of José Bedia. Although he is one of the most outstanding examples in the history of art in Cuba and Latin America, and he has also received international acknowledgement, his true importance has not yet been fully recognized. In his paintings, drawings and installations, José Bedia has not only used a hive of cultural references from Cuba, but also from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, focussing on those that western civilization, with its technological vanity and false idea of progress, has considered underdeveloped, backward or pre-modern.