My new art offerings for the month of July are the work of Nicaraguan Artist Jose Ignacio Fletes Cruz. He is counted among the Primitivista painters, whose naif style of image-making is associated with a utopian Christian community, founded in the mid 1960s by Roman Catholic Poet-Priest Ernesto Cardenal in the Solentiname island chain in Lake Nicaragua to put the ideals of Liberation Theology into practice. The original community was destroyed in 1977 by forces loyal to Nicaraguan Dictator Anastasio Somoza and revived after the Sandinista rebels came to power two years later. Much of the art coming from Solentiname these days has a postcard prettiness about it, but Fletes Cruz has remained true to the founding ideals of the community, although he no longer lives there. The series of seven images added this month to the galleries of the Life of Christ section begins with a vision of angelic choristers above a humble manger scene, proclaiming the good news of Christ's birth, and ends with a dramatic depiction of Christ returning to earth in glory, accompanied by the hosts of heaven wielding flaming swords. Jesus multiples loaves and fishes to feed five thousand and raises Lazarus from the dead in tropical landscapes complete with coconut palms and erupting volcanoes typical of the Primitivista style. Christ is presented as a man of the people, walking on water in ordinary work clothes to rescue a storm-besieged boatload of disciples who might well be Solentiname fishermen. He shares the Last Supper, as well, in a shack with campesinos who have just been laboring in the fields. Fletes Cruz's depiction of Crucifixion (above) commemorates the raid on the Solentiname Community, where we see soldiers in the military dress of Somoza's army, keeping grieving villagers away from the Peasant Christ who dies on the Cross. (John Kohan)