This is a lovely lithograph by this Cuban Master. It was done on a hand made Kuzo paper, and is in immaculate condition. De Prisa, 1995 Lithograph on Kuzo paper.
18 7/8 × 25 1/4 in (47.9 × 64.1 cm) done in 1995
pencil signed and dated
numbered 82/100
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, publisher.
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, focusing on those that western civilization, with its technological vanity and false idea of progress, has considered underdeveloped, backward or pre-modern.
According to Bedia, his work is an attempt to rescue, through the discursive strategies of contemporary art, the dispersed fragments of that old wisdom which, to a greater or lesser extent, all those societies have in common, and which are of great importance to complete the deficits of our unbalanced contemporaneity. Bedia's creative method, seemingly spontaneous, intuitive and at times naive, is not only the product of previous rigorous study, but of the assimilation of formal, material, aesthetic, symbolic and historical elements from those cultures that have inspired him and that he reflects either in a simple drawing or painting or in one of his monumental installations. The often simple and schematic appearance of his works and the generally austere and synthetic character of his discourse follows the principle of doing more with less, concealing a conceptual and philosophical depth and an abundance of uncommon information, the result not so much of bookish study as of his contact and direct identification with the systems of knowledge of those cultural groups that some call native, aboriginal or traditional.
Bedia's work is featured in many museum collections worldwide. Just a few are as follows:
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
Contemporary Art Museum, San Diego, CA
MOCA, Long Beach, CA
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, CA
Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HA
Perseus Collection, Honolulu, HI
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC
Smithsonian Museum, Washington, DC
Spencer Museum, Lawrence, KS
McCormick Place Art Collection, Chicago, IL
Miami Art Museum, Miami, FL
MOCA, Miami, Florida
PAMM, Miami, Florida
Kendall Art Center, Miami, Florida
NSU Art Center, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL
Polk Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Bacardi Art Foundation, Miami, FL
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ
Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI
Walter Phillips Gallery, Bath, CanadaLudwig Collection, Aachen, Germany
Pori Taidmuseum, Finland
Tate Museum, London, UK
The Collection Daros, Zurich, Switzerland
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Monterrey , Mexico
Liceo Minvielle, Lagos, Mexico
Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico
Extremadura and Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art of Badajoz, Spain
MEIAC, DA2, IVAM, CAAM, Spain
Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela
Museo de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba
Centro Wifredo Lam, Havana, Cuba
