On February 12, 2004, Álvarez died just five days after the beginning of a major solo exhibition of his work, "Landscape in the Fireplace," at the Arizona State University Art Museum.
[3] ASU Art Museum director Marilyn Zeitlin said Álvarez's work "addresses questions of importance not only for Cubans and those interested in that work and place, but issues of perennial and global concern including colonialism and ways in which we perpetuate colonialism without even being aware of it.
"[4] Much of his work utilized a juxtaposition of pop culture references, such as clippings from The Simpsons comic books, against traditional Cuban images, such as 19th century peasants and troubadours.
Clips from art catalogues, magazines, books, old postcards, bank notes are intuitively collected and stocked for some time until they are used, in a more or less fragmentary way, as backgrounds, characters or plain referents.
The execution phase has its own rhythm and tensions, but in a general sense, the majority of the important decisions has already been taken before painting starts.