Aug 27, 2019
Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar’s 97th Birthday
This Doodle’s Key Themes
Today’s Doodle celebrates the life and work of the esteemed Colombian artist Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, widely considered one of the most notable sculptors of his country. Born in Pamplona on this day in 1922, Villamizar was the son of a jeweler who studied architecture before achieving worldwide acclaim for his paintings and sculptures.
Exposed to international modernism on trips to Paris and New York during the 1950s, he met with early success. One of his pieces, The Black and White Painting, was acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1956, and two years later he won a Guggenheim award.
Upon returning home, he became a pioneer of abstract art in Colombia. His 1952 solo exhibition at the National Library of Bogotá was one of the first shows of abstract painting, and his 1957 Composition in Ocres was the country’s first non-objective mural. The curved shapes of his large El Dorado relief created for Banco de Bogotá were covered in gold leaf, a nod to pre-Columbian figures and Latin American goldsmithing. In later sculptural works, he translated the distinctive shapes of pre-Columbian art into abstract planes.
Villamizar represented Colombia at the 1969 São Paulo Biennial, winning the second international prize. He created the monumental 1974 piece Sixteen Towers atop the Bogotá hills, and the Colombian government awarded him the prestigious Cruz de Boyacá. His legacy lives on at the Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar Museum of Modern Art in his hometown, where much of the artist’s work is housed in a grand colonial home in Pamplona’s central square.
Early concept rough sketch by artist Gerben Steenks
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