This week witnessed the passing of two fine artists - one of global renown, the other, little known outside Jamaica - whose mediums of creation were vastly different, but whose works would have had profound relevance and impact on all who came in contact with them.

What is surprising, though, is that the deaths of the Jamaican sculptor Christopher Gonzalez, especially, and the Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn hardly caused a ripple here. Indeed, the public notices on Gonzalez's passing, aged 65, were almost perfunctory. That of Solzhenitsyn was not even mentioned.

Unfortunately, when Gonzalez is remembered in popular discourse in Jamaica, it tends to be in relation to his 1982 bronze interpretation of the reggae musician Bob Marley, which was to have been mounted in Kingston near the National Stadium.

Controversial sculptor

People wanted a literal rendering of Marley while Gonzalez saw in him something strong and monumental - firm roots, stout trunk bearing us fruit. A near riot meant that Gonzalez's work, a fine piece of art, could not be formally unveiled, languishing in the National Gallery for several years. The eventual public monument to Marley by another artist was of the literal interpretation that people wanted.

Significantly, Gonzalez never appeared bitter about the public's response to his Marley and more important, he was never apologetic. For, in that work, he had told a truth as he saw it.

And this is what is important about Gonzalez, this product of a Puerto Rican father and Jamaican-Puerto Rican mother, who, in appearance, did not look like the vast majority of Jamaicans. His work, though, reflected the environment in which he lived and the aspirations of the people who surrounded him.

Indeed, the Bob Marley statue was not the only controversial work. His black Jesus Christ, which hangs over the altar at St Jude's Church, near Stony Hill square, has been a source of comment and debate for nearly two decades.

Yet, like so many of Gonzalez's other works, it has served to inspire. In many respects, the Bob Marley statue and the St Jude's Jesus are important declarations of an indomitable spirit in a constant quest for freedom.

Great writer

In the case of Solzhenitsyn, 89, who was buried in Moscow yesterday, we perhaps do not consider him as important. But, if nothing else, he was a great writer and monumental works like the Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovic were good reads.

They, however, were more than that. These powerful exposés of the Soviet Union's forced labour camps and Stalinist repression played no small part in helping to undermine Soviet communism. Indeed, as a dissident, Solzhenitsyn, who was exiled to the West in 1974, was at his height as the Cold War ideological debate in Jamaica was on the rise. His contribution to the global anti-communist agenda fed into perceptions of the Soviet Union and impacted on how critics defined Michael Manley's democratic socialist experiment in Jamaica.

In recent years, Solzhenitsyn has trumpeted a cause of Slavic revival in the context of Russian orthodoxy, which has placed him at odds with other former dissidents and people wary of the rise of xenophobic nationalism.

But there is little doubt that this was one of the great figures of the 20th century, whose books gave pleasure while working in the cause of freedom.