Translations:Alejandro Obregón/4/en

Artistic Career

Early career

Alejandro Obregón remained in the city of Barcelona until 1944, where he presented an individual exhibition. On his return to Colombia, he settled in Bogotá, where he would share a studio with Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo. Recently arrived from Europe, he debuted in the Colombian art world at the V National Artists’ Salon, with the oil paintings Naturaleza muerta (Still Life), Retrato del pintor (Portrait of the Painter), and Niña con jarro (Girl with a Jar). Since then, his name remained in the foreground and his works continue to be exhibited with great commercial success. In 1945 at the IV National Artists Salon, Obregón began to reveal what would be his signature, his energetic, free, bold strokes. In 1947, a retrospective exhibition was held at the Gregorio Vásquez Hall of the National Library in Bogotá with 62 of his works, where the diversity of gray tones can be appreciated. His themes revolved around self-portraits, female heads, and landscapes. The characteristics of his works and his legacy to art became evident in 1947 when he included fishes, barracudas, and events from the early bipartisan violence in Colombia. From then on, his work was recognized as belonging to Magical Expressionism. By the year 1948, "a peak year under the sign of Alejandro Obregón" (in the words of historian and art critic Walter Engel), the historical-social context of Colombia was already appearing in his work, and the tragedy of April 9 and the violent events in the country were addressed by the artist. This period the artist referred to as his "dark" period where brown, blue, dark gray, and black colors are dominant, in addition to references to Pablo Picasso. Obregón was appointed director of the School of Fine Arts in Bogotá in the same year, and also led the organization of several art salons. He later traveled to France with his wife Sonia Osorio. When he returned several years later in 1955, he began a series of symbolic still lifes, with themes of death and mourning. In these works, we can locate the symbols of the bull and the condor.

Artistic Career

Obregón's artistic career can be divided into approximately four periods. The first, 1942-1946, was a period of training. In this period his painting is contradictory and full of hesitation; his production oscillates between a naturalism with academic recollections and a forced expressionism. The second, 1947-1957, is of stylistic definition and a first maturity. With memories of Cubism, Obregón made miraculously balanced compositions in which he articulated numerous planes in many ways, sometimes with transparency, on neutral backgrounds that also include more or less evident planes. Some of his characteristic motifs appear here already, as well as some of his masterpieces: Puertas y el espacio (Doors and Space), 1951, Bodegón en Amarillo (Still Life in Yellow), 1955, Greguerías y camaleón (Turmoil and Chameleon), 1957