Belkis Ayón Manso (Cuba, 1967 – 1999)

Belkis Ayón was a Cuban printmaker. Ayón attended the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and joined as faculty after her graduation. Ayón ‘s early work would focus on depicting scenes of city life, interiors, and portraits, but would slowly shift towards depicting the Afro-Cuban imagery and iconography of the Abakua. The Abakua are a secretive, all-male religious society with a complex mythology. Ayón focused almost exclusively on collography, a printmaking technique, creating intricate patterns and layers to her work to form depth and texture, fusing figurative and abstract methods of representation. In 1993, she exhibited at the 16th Venice Biennale and won the international prize at the International Graphics Biennale in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Her work can now be found in the permanent collections of a number of museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.