About the artist:

Born in London, from Argentine parents, Mónica Meira arrived in Bogota, where she studied elementary and high school and then her Fine Arts career at Universidad de los Andes. Already married, she lived in Paris from 1983 to 1987 and since 1992 she lives between Bogotá and New York. Your family is a very special group. Juan Cárdenas is a prestigious master of full time and his two children are also very well prepared artists in the United States. In his hometown, he lives with discretion an exceptional cultural world. All are integrated in an international environment that is completely without snobbery. Interest in the visual arts, music and study in general is the norm. All this makes Monica Meira a different artist, as far from the provincial as any attitude of arrogance. Knowing the history of art, she watches with interest all the artistic manifestations of today, so that they are not the closest to her own inclinations. I would say, like Robert Hughes of Susan Rothenberg, his serenity and talent are beyond doubt. The Colombian has survived the hartazon and cultural vomitera of the early eighties, the manic creation of stars and the pressure exerted on immature talent. Her restless but leisurely temperament became strong enough to withstand the unpleasant experience of being tucked into the pressure cooker in Bogota much less than in New York, of course.

After completing her studies in Fine Arts in 1971, Mónica Meira had already participated in several group exhibitions since 1968, some of which were devoted to the graphic arts (Unesco engraving competition, National Library, Bogota, "Young Illustrators", National Library, Bogotá, "Recorders and Draftsmen of Colombia", Luis Ángel Arango Library, Bogota and First Biennial of Graphic Arts, La Tertulia Museum, Cali). He had also presented an individual exhibit at Galería El Callejón in Bogota in 1969.

One of them Monica Meira (1949), whose professional work began to become public from the early seventies.

More than half a century ago the visual arts have expanded the spectrum of their activities with transgressive productions that have undoubtedly been welcomed by artists who wished to escape the repetition of the "isms" of the first decades of the last century. There have been many unusual proposals that allow us to talk about conceptual art, body art, land art, installations, videos, photographs and a great etcetera. Many of these works are important, especially those that open new horizons of sensitivity and demonstrate intelligence and creativity. But alongside these productions, the traditional visual arts remain fully valid. It is not difficult to recount a good number of works carried out in the fields of figuration and abstraction in this same period.

As an exercise in this point, I would like to briefly recall some outstanding names in figurative art, to which Monica Meira belongs, around its chronology, that is, omitting artists born at the beginning of the 20th century. I cite names of the international exhibitions that were organized to highlight the innocuous presence of the art of the human figure in our time. Art practiced, moreover, closer to the great tradition of humanism than the new expressionism that emerged in the seventies and eighties. The British Council in 1984 included: Patrick Caulfield (1936), Graham Crowley (1950), Anthony Green (1939), David Hockney (1937) and John Lessore (1939). Sandra Fischer (1947), Luciano Castelli (1951), and Sandra Fischer (1947), Luciano Castelli (1951), a Swiss-born Swiss citizen, was exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington. The Germans Klaus Fussmann (1938) and Wolfgang Petrick (1939), the Spaniards Antonio López García (1936) and Isabel Quintanilla (1938) and the Colombian Juan Cárdenas (1939), who participated with eleven oils, including one entitled Landscape Self-portrait and woman, of 1982, in which Monica Meira, wife of the artist, is one of the best representatives of Colombian art.