Three new major works were added and unveiled last Saturday to the de la Cruz Collection in the Design District. The works were by Carlos Alfonzo, the Cuban-born artist who came to the United States on the Mariel boatlift in 1980. Alfonzo started out as a state-sanctioned artist in Cuba, but when he came to the U.S., his work took a different turn, as Alfonzo for the first time became open about his sexuality. He filled canvas after canvas with wildly energetic and anxiously expressive renderings of raw emotion, despair, and alienation. Alfonzo’s life was eventually claimed by AIDS in 1991.

New to the de la Cruz Collection are three works; Sea Bitch Born Deep, the 1986 work pictured above, with its surreal rendering of Afro-Caribbean ballerinas; Water Seeds a triptych piece commissioned specifically for the de la Cruz residence in 1989; and 1990’s Witness, which tackles the artist’s own mortality as part of a series of “Black Paintings” made shortly before his death.

De La Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space: 23 NE 41st St.., Miami; 305-576-6112; delacruzcollection.org