This composition of seventeen drawings constitutes the first study for a series of paintings and collage-paintings Lázaro Saavedra developed in a larger format around 1985–86, the artist’s formative stage. Through a system of signs (thought/waves,word/arrows, gaze/points), Saavedra represents different interactions and aspects of human communication. In the drawings, the appropriation of Cuban graphic humor stands out, and the influence of comics is visible in the texts accompanying the pieces. This rhetorical strategy underpins the existential and hilosophical reflections of the artist on the characteristics of the sociopolitical context of the island. The expressionist-oriented visual drama of these tragic characters—resolved through lively drawing and loose brushwork—represents the verbal violence of those in power. This series is an allegory of demagoguery, authoritarianism, censorship, and the lack of communication between the arts sector and the official Cuban sphere, in a context plagued by orthodox and sectarian ideas of the 1980s.

Saavedra is one of the fundamental referents of the so-called New Cuban Art of the 1980s. A member of the Puré group during this decade and founder of the Enema collective (2000–2003) as part of his pedagogical work at the Instituto Superior de Arte, he has ventured into drawing, painting, installation, performance, video, and new media, with a discourse that incorporates irony and a critical view of Cuban daily life.