(1957-1996) One of the most influential artists of the 1990s and perhaps of the twentieth century, Felix Gonzalez-Torres was born in Guáimaro, Cuba, in 1957. His work is paradigmatic in its minimalism, its metaphorical power, and its engagement with social issues through a poetic language—of form and substance—transparent and elliptical as it simultaneously reveals and conceals. When Gonzalez-Torres was fourteen, his family sent him to Spain with his sister Gloria to escape communism on the island after the revolution of 1959 and the obligatory military service the young man would be forced to undertake at age sixteen. After a difficult period in Madrid, Felix and Gloria lived with family in Miami, but the relationship was a difficult one. The brother and sister opted to move to Puerto Rico to live with an uncle. In 1976, Felix and Gloria moved to their own apartment in San Juan. Both siblings worked while attending school. Gonzalez-Torres did not see the rest of his family again until 1979, during a visit to Cuba. He eventually reunited with them in Miami in 1980, after his parents left Cuba through the Mariel boatlift.