Edgar Negret - Colombian Sculptor

Flor Sanky

Following up with our Colombian Artists series at THE ART REFERENCE now we present Edgar Negret.

Edgar Negret (born 11 October 1920 Popayán, Colombia) is a modern Latin American abstract sculptor. He attended the School of Fine Arts in Cali, Colombia. Initially working in stone in styles reminiscent of European modernists like Jean Arp and Constantin Brâncuşi; by the early 1950s, he began working in metal in constructivist tradition.

Edgar Negret

In 1955, his art was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.In 1963, he won the Salón de Artistas Colombianos, and therefore becoming one of the most prominent Colombian sculptors of the 20th century. In 1968, he was awarded the David E. Bright Sculpture Prize, at the Thirty-fourth Venice Biennial. In 1985, the Museum Negret opened. In 2010, he was awarded “Grado de Oficial” by order of the Congress of Colombia.

EDGAR NEGRET

Edgar Negret was born in Popayán in 1920, the same year as both Obregón and Grau, with whose careers his own provides a fascinating contrast. By age eighteen he was attending the School of Fine Arts in Cali, in the southwestern part of the country. In 1948, while home in Popayán, he met the Spanish sculptor Jorge de Oteiza, who decisively influenced his early work. In 1950, following a stay in Manhattan, Negret went off to Europe, residing for short periods first in Barcelona and then in Mallorca and Paris. While living in New York, Negret came to know such United States artists as Louise Nevelson, Jack Youngerman and Ellsworth Kelly. By 1955 his prestige was on the ascendant. Among the exhibitions in which he participated was "New Acquisitions," at New York's Museum of Modern Art. An excellent example of his work of this period is provided by the series of "Magic Apparatuses," presented at the 1957 São Paulo Biennial and in Bogotá the following year. [In the present exhibit, Map belongs to this series, while Space Navigator andMetallic Tower are later works.] Negret received worldwide public recognition in 1968, when his work was awarded the David E. Bright international prize for sculpture at the Thirty-fourth Venice Biennial. Negret's work abounds in allusions to post-war technology. Their precise, blade-like edges are tempered by intelligent handling, which causes us to question the relevance of our present concerns and our anxieties with regard to the future. As objects, his sculptures lead us likewise to question the roles that other objects play, both in our own lives and in our communities, like it or not. This attitude of questioning has led both Negret and Ramírez Villamizar ­ although they have taken opposite directions ­ to investigate ancient artifacts. From them the two sculptors have extracted elements of poetry and mystery that impart a timeless quality to their compositions. Negret's sculptures are like magic vessels within which a genie lies hidden. By touching them with the imagination, one can impart other qualities to their mechanical coldness and functionality. These works remind us that we cannot escape the impersonality of mass production and the homogenization of daily life and must find some means of harmonious adaptation.

Dinamismo

La Torre Sin Fin

Check out an academic video done by the students Francisco Javier Zambrano Chaves and Alieth Vargas at Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas Facultad de Artes ASAB (Academia Superior de Artes de Bogotá):

THE BIG FIVE Artists from Colombia remains. R. Villamizar, Enrique Grau and A. Obregon will come soon!

Please, keep checking out!

Fernando Botero - Colombian Artists

If you dont know Botero´s corpulent figures and work yet, you should!

With this post, I will try to show you a little bit of this artist´s impacting work.

His work is shown in 46 museums throughtout the world.

Mona Lisa (1963)

Fernando Botero Angulo (born April 19, 1932) is a Colombian figurative artist, self-titled "the most Colombian of Colombian artists" early on. He came to national prominence when he won the first prize at the Salón de Artistas Colombianos in 1958. Working most of the year in Paris, in the last three decades he has achieved international recognition for his paintings, drawings and sculpture, with exhibitions across the world.

In 1948, at the age of 16, Botero published his first illustrations in the Sunday supplement of the El Colombiano daily paper. He used the money he was paid to attend high school at the Liceo de Marinilla de Antioquia. From 1949 to 1950, Botero worked as a set designer, before moving to Bogotá in 1951. His first one-man show was held at the Galería Leo Matiz in Bogotá, a few months after his arrival. In 1952, Botero travelled with a group of artists to Barcelona, where he stayed briefly before moving on to Madrid. In Madrid, Botero studied at the Academia de San Fernando. In 1952, he traveled to Bogotá, where he had a solo exhibit at the Leo Matiz gallery. Later that year, he won the ninth edition of the Salón de Artistas Colombianos. He has had more than 50 exhibits in major cities worldwide, and his work commands selling prices in the millions of dollars.

Una familia

Mano Grande (1981)

Style

Botero is an abstract artist in the most fundamental sense, choosing colors, shapes, and proportions based on intuitive aesthetic thinking.While his work includes still-lifes and landscapes, Botero has concentrated on situational portraiture. His paintings and sculptures are united by their proportionally exaggerated, or "fat" figures, as he once referred to them.

"I create my subjects somehow visualizing them in my style. I start as a poet, put the colors and composition down on canvas as a painter, but finish my work as a sculptor taking delight in caressing the forms." -- Fernando Botero

So, why large figures?

Botero explains his use of these "large people", as they are often called by critics, in the following way: "An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it."

In a series of paintings and drawings, artist Fernando Botero reflects

on the 2004 prisoner abuse scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Abu Ghraib´s Series

 

When we think about the Colombian artist Fernando Botero, most of us visualize his roly-poly people flaunting their fat, their fashionable headgear, their cigarettes and cigarette holders, their excess. I never thought of these as political images until I saw Botero's Abu Ghraib series in which hooded men dangle, upside down, and hideous dogs claw and growl at manacled prisoners arranged into pyramids and bleeding on each other.

 

Check out a conversation between Fernando Botero and Robert Hass, Professor of English and Poet, UC Berkeley:

 

 

This is an one hour conversation in Berkeley with Botero and Robert. You will enjoy to listen to them talking about art !! This is a must listen!

                                                                 Colombiana (1991)

I Musicisti

Museo Botero in Bogotá

It has also been said that the pictorial language of Botero evokes the musical language of Mozart. This is especially evident in his paintings of musicians. It is a subject that, along with gay scenes of couples dancing, the artist returned to often. Indeed, these pictures, full of life and movement, provide an ideal opportunity for Botero to create dynamic compositions in which his characters play, dance, and sing, usually within a defined environment that gives context and frames their activity.

Paintings and drawings of guitar players, flutists, violinists, singers are scattered throughout the artist's oeuvre. One also finds still lives of musical instruments: a guitar placed on a table, with the musical sheet peeking below; or a cello in a corner, waiting to be played. In these paintings the instrument becomes the primary subject for the artist. Botero recognizes that the beauty of music is due as much to the instrument as it is to the musician. In fact, as the artist himself has said, "If I went to a remote place, in a short time I would get used to the silence and, most probably, would stop painting."

A cat on a Roof (1978)

Fernando Botero portrayed Pablo Escobar's death in one

of his paintings about violence in Colombia

A parody with Botero´s Colombian Family (1999) including Quentin Tarantino

   

Check the Museum Syndicate for his paintings (LINK) 

Google Images of Fernando Botero (LINK)