Beer’s themes are of black-skinned people and feminist commentary and at the time they were painted, were unique in these themes. They also are reflective of the times in which she lived and parallel the state of the country during the time of the Sandinista revolutionary movement. She was anti-Somoza and outspoken in her support for the rebels. Beer's activities resulted in her imprisonment by the Somoza National Guards in 1970 and again in 1971. In 1971, Beer returned for two years to the capital, in an attempt to integrate and learn from the professional artists working in Managua. She was criticized because her work was not in the style of the popular, untrained primitive artists from the Solentiname Islands who created detailed landscapes, nor was it in the style of the majority of painters in Managua, whose works were largely abstract.