Colombian Art
Colombian ArtColombian Art
It was not until the 1950’s that Colombian artist showed their artwork to the nation and their skill behind it. Colombian artist began to rise like Alejandro Obregon, Enrique Grau, Edgar Negret and Eduardo Ramirez Villamizar- began to take new direction in the Colombian art world and also had a major influence on it too. The delay of Colombian art can be explained by the region’s complex geography. Mountain barriers have said to separate the human settlement from others. Even after the independence from Spain in 1819, art didn’t have a major influence on Colombian lifestyle. Then in the 1920’s is when several outstanding sculptors, notably Marco Tobon Mejia and Jose Horacio Betancur. Influenced by Mexican art, this group of several sculptors from the city of Medellin created the second greatest mural movement in the Americas. From this the Colombian art world was introduced to new ideas and techniques. Prior to World War II, Colombia was at its climax with the strongest democratic traditions in Latin America. But in the early 1940’s social problems developed and created a loss of interest in Colombian art style, which directed many Colombian artists to study foreign artworks. This lead Colombian artist to show different styles of art like in 1944, the influence of Post-Impressionist and of the French academic style came to Colombian. Also another group of Colombians divided off to study the
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techniques of Mexican muralist, a style that is shown in many pieces done at this point in time. In the 1950’s Colombian art changed directions and finally Colombian artist got interested on new viewpoint on Western and native elements of art. All these influences in Colombian art, which concludes to the adoption of the aesthetic principles of 20th century art.
Until the mid century, Colombian painting and sculptures showed a wide range of figurative styles, but very little use of abstraction. While some artworks were very modern, a few of them were relatively simple compared with the art in Europe and the U.S. Many artist combined European tendencies such as cubism and geometric abstraction, for an example, artist Carlos Correa in the artwork Still Life in Silence. This piece shows the influence of cubism and geometric abstraction. This Colombian style is still in the...
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