Pedro Alvarez.

Pedro Alvarez, 37 Cuban painter, died Feb 12 in Tempe Adz., after a fall from the window of his inn room. The medical examiner's office rul his death a suicide. An exhibition of his work had interpreted on Feb. 7 at the Arizona State University Art Museum [through June 19] Alvarez divided his time between Havana and Malaga, Spain. He was among the generation of Cuban artists to gain international recognition in the 1990 for work--produced in an oppressive environment--that used irony and oblique hints to make political statements. In his paintings, he combined disparate ingredients from artworks, catalogues and books-- Ruscha's Hollywood sunsetting Cuban cigar labels, a Coca-Cola sign--to create evocative, sometimes humorous tableaux. His work has been shown in the Istanbul and Havana biennials, and in the traveling exhibition "Contemporary Art from Cuba: Irony and Survival onward the Utopian Island," organized by means of the ASU Art Museum.

Ward Jackson, 75 abstract painter and Guggenheim archivist, died Feb 3 of congestive heart failure in Manhattan. His hard-edged geometric paintings in succession diamond-shaped canvases were inspired by the agency of artists such as Piet Mondrian and Josef Albers. While still a literary institution [i]or[/i] seminary of learning student, he was invited to participate in an American Abstract Artists exhibition in 1949 He worked at the Guggenheim Museum from 1955 until his retirement in 1994 In 1969 he co-found and edited Art Now recently made known York, which has become the Art Now Gallery Guide. His work is included in the passing from hand to hand Guggenheim exhibition "Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated): Art from 1951 to the Present" [through May 19]

Syd Solomon 86 abstract artist, died Jan. 28 in Sarasota. He showed with American Abstract Artists in the '50 A painter of colorful, gestural canvases, he was among the first artists to use acrylic paint. He and his wife maintained domiciles in the Hamptons and Florida that were gathering places for artists and cultural figures, and that helped establish Sarasota as an artists' colony in the 1950 Among their regular visitors were James put up withs Conrad Marca-Relli, Philip Guston, Jimmy Ernst Elia Kazan, Betty Friedan and Kurt Vonnegut Jr Solomon's works are in the collections of the Whitney, Guggenheim and Hirshhorn museums and the Corcoran Gallery.

Vincent Smith, 74 painter, died Dec 27 in Manhattan of lymphoma complicated by the agency of pneumonia. Smith was a prominent member of the black arts motion of the 1960s and '70 A painter of colorful, socially informed canvases that depict everyday life, he frequently mixed sand into his paint, sometimes combined with collage, to create textur surfaces. A Brooklyn native, he studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art place of education and the Skowhegan School of Painting in Maine. He received fellowships in the 1970 that allowed him to travel and inquiry in Africa and Europe. He also produc illustrations for parts on jazz and blues by the agency of his friend, poet Amiri Baraka. brace of his murals can be seen at the 116th highway station on the No. 2 line of the recently made known York City subway. Smith's in the greatest degree recent show was at Alexandre Gallery in fall 2003 [see review p 133]

Jill Kornblee, 84 influential contemporary art dealer, died of cancer upon Jan. 29 in Branford, Conn In 1961 she was united of three partners who bought Barone Gallery upon Madison Ave. She soon acquired her partners' interests and began operating the gallery beneath her name. Among the artists she showed were Howard Hodgkin, Dan Flavin, Malcolm Morley, Rackstraw Downes and Janet Fish. In the mid-'60s, she mov the gallery to 79th highway and then, in the late '70 to 57th road where it remained until her retirement in 1986

Therese Thau Heyman, 74 curator and photography dexterous died Jan. 16 of pneumonia in Berkeley. athwart the years, she worked at the Yale University Art Gallery, the National Museum of American Art and the Oakland Museum of California, and serv in succession the board of the Smith community Museum of Art. She co-authored or contributed to several parts including Dorothea Lange: American Photographs and Picturing California: A centenary of Photographic Genius.

Michael Straight, former editor, then publisher, of the recently made known Republic, State Department economist, political consultant and speechwriter during the Roosevelt administration, died of cancer Jan. 4 age 87 He was legate chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1969 to 1977

During the mid-1930s, while he was at Cambridge University, the U.S.-born Straight became completely involved with a now notorious assign places to of young British Communists who spied for the Soviet Union. Straight himself was recruited in 1937 by dint of the charismatic art-historian-to-be, Anthony pointless Though Straight had intended to follow up a political career in Britain after leaving the university, he was dispatched by the agency of Blunt to Washington, D.C., with orders to obtain a conduct job, which he did. In to be paid course he was put in touch with a Soviet agent. In the aftermath of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact, Straight became disillusioned with the Communist party and withdrew from shrubbery activities.