About the artist:

Born in Barcelona, Colombian artist Alejandro Obregón spent most of his childhood between Europe and the United States. He attended art classes irregularly in Boston and Barcelona, where in 1940 he was named Colombian Vice Consul. Four years later, he returned to Colombia, where he positioned himself as a young hope of the national art scene. His paintings from the second half of the 1940s were intersected by multiple influences: Cézanne and Picasso being among the international influences and Gómez Jaramillo the national influence. One of his significant works from this period was Masacre - 10 de abril (1948), which took its inspiration from Picasso’s Guernica to discuss the killings that followed the murder of liberal leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán on April 9, 1948. That same year, he was named director at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Bogotá, a position he left a year later to continue his training in France, where he studied the fresco technique, assimilated cubism, and began to include symbolic elements in his works. Before returning to Colombia, he first exhibited at the Galerie Creuze in Paris (1954) and then showed at the Pan American Union in Washington, D.C. (1955), where he established himself as a prominent artist of the Colombian avant-garde. He then achieved significant recognition: he participated in the 1955 São Paulo Biennale; the Museum of Modern Art acquired his painting Souvenir of Venice (1955); Ganado ahogándose en el Magdalena—a piece that marked the transition of his work from geometric structures from his French period to a more expressionist spontaneity—received first prize at the Gulf-Caribbean Exhibition organized by José Gómez Sicre at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston (1956). That same year, Obregón’s success was confirmed by the Guggenheim International Award, which he received for The Dead Student (The Vigil) in the Colombian category. He spent some time in France and the United States (1957-1958) where he came into contact with informalism and action painting, increasing the gesturality and lyricism in his works. Some of his works during this period touched on abstractionism. However, Obregón’s paintings simultaneously incorporated emblems of his nation, such as the condƒor, the mojarras, barracudas, volcanoes and bulls, among others. After reaching his artistic zenith, with the acclaim of critics and the public, in 1966 Obregón abandoned the use of oil in favor of acrylic paint, and in 1968 he moved to Cartagena. These last two milestones opened up a new phase in his work, which continued without significant variations throughout the rest of his career.

- Biography courtesy of Arts of the Americas