‘Encuentros’: The Sura collection

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File photo from the Sura collection.

When we think of contemporary Mexican art, one tends to delve back a half century to the rich visual culture of the country’s great modernists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Think of Fernando Botero, Colombia’s most important living artist and one might not immediately see a relationship between the Medellín-born sculptor and a country, which since the last century, has welcomed many of Colombia’s most well-respected writers, poets and painters, as their second home.

The National Museum of Colombia launched this month an exhibition titled “Encuentros: Mexico – Colombia,” and which looks at the artistic production of these two countries through paintings, drawings, engravings and sculptures of the SURA collection.

The exhibition consists of one hundred works created in both countries and which include various artistic mediums, from oil and watercolour to sculpture, engraving and photography.

Divided into four thematic areas, the exhibition ‘Encuentros” (Encounters), begins with Meet the Territory in which both the Colombian and Mexican landscape are explored. The second section deals with portraiture and the search for an “American identity.” This search would lead to the creation of Mexico’s Modernist School and influence profoundly the growth of art academies in Colombia.

The self-portraits of Frida Kahlo and the industrious labourers depicted by Rivera in notebooks and murals influenced painters and photographers across the hemisphere to look at their own peoples. In Colombia, the paintings of Débora Arango challenged perceptions of the role of women in a staunchly Catholic society, and her portraits of Colombian “commoners” from priests to prostitutes, gave birth to this country’s very own strand of morally-defiant modernism.

The Sura collection houses some of the most influential names in Latin American art, such as Felipe Santiago Gutiérrez, Manuel Rodriguez, Saturnino Herran, Jorge González Camarena and Rufino Tamayo.

With large canvas works on display by Eduardo Morales, Frida Kahlo, Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo and Débora Arango among others, “Encuentros” is an important exhibition for the city, and one which highlights a long standing cultural heritage of two visually engaged nations.

“Encuentros” runs until June 7th and is free to the public.

Museo Nacional. Cra 7 No.28-66

 

 

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