June Beer (1935–1986) was a Nicaraguan naïve artist, who gained national and international acclaim for her works depicting African and feminist themes.

The Nicaraguan government protected four of her paintings—Fruit Seller, In Memory of Efie Irene, They Dance and Woman Working—by declaring them as part of the national patrimony.

June Gloria Beer Thompson was born on 17 May 1935[Notes 1] in Bluefields, Nicaragua into a middle-class family as the youngest of eleven children.

[7] In 1954 Beer moved to the United States, first working at a dry-cleaning business and then as an artist's model in Los Angeles, California at a variety of art schools.

She painted the people around her, men working in the fields or on the docks, women cleaning, cooking and washing clothes and gave them away.

[1][8] In 1971, Beer returned for two years to the capital, in an attempt to integrate and learn from the professional artists working in Managua.

[2] In 1978 the Somoza National Guards begin a series of repression campaigns against the communities along the Atlantic Coast, and finally forced Beer to flee to Costa Rica in 1979.

Two days after Somoza was toppled from power, she returned to Nicaragua 19 July 1979 and began working as the head librarian of the Bluefields Public Library.

[13] In August 2003 the Nicaraguan government made it illegal for four of Beer's paintings to leave the country, protecting Fruit Seller, In Memory of Efie Irene, They Dance and Woman Working as part of the national patrimony.

In 2008 she was honored with an annual literary award bearing her name, the June Beer Literary Prize in Mother Tongues (Spanish: Premio Literario Internacional en Lenguas Maternas “June Beer”), which is awarded to authors who produce works in indigenous or Creole languages.