On show at last: the myths and mysteries of Belkis Ayón, a giant of Cuban art

The short but brilliant career of the printmaker is explored at her first European retrospective in Madrid, 22 years after she died

Their creator is long gone, but Belkis Ayon's figures live on in syncretic shadow and silhouette, forever slipping between realms and roles, borders and beliefs.

Over the course of a short but brilliant life whose final years were profoundly marked by the chaos that the collapse of the Soviet Union visited on her native Cuba, Ayon established herself as an artist whose technical skills were matched only by the haunted and hallucinatory intensity of her imagination.