By Janet Batet, Arts Journalist

The internationally acclaimed Cuban born Miami based artist Jose Bedia, has been awarded with the First Award of the IV Beijing International Art Biennale in the category of painting for his diptych: Seguido por la tormenta (Followed by the Storm) and El intrépido (The Intrepid). This influential cultural event, opened since 2003, has become one of the most important venues of the contemporary art, being dedicated this 2010 edition to the environmental pressing issues in our world nowadays.

Jose Bedia (Havana, 1959) is one of the emblematic figures of the contemporary art scene and one of the protagonists of the New Cuban Art Movement that changed the island’s cultural landscape in the midst of the eighties with its unprejudiced and disturbing comments on Cuban society and art.Bedia’s artwork is a perennial incursion in the ontological meaning of the human existence in its fleeting passage through life. His artistic inquiry constitutes a search for alternative sources to the exhausted History of the Western hegemonic culture.

With a very personal style characterized by the high level of synthesis where the stylized black silhouettes act as entities charged with a strong moral meaning, his artworks are resemantizations of the stories and legends of the so-called primitive cultures into our contemporary society. This moral character is reaffirmed by the presence of text emphasizing, in a sort of premonitory halo, the final destination, the ultimate consequence of our simplest acts. Congratulations!