Translations:Sofía Urrutia Holguín/3/en

Biography

Sofía Urrutia was born into a prominent family from the city of Popayán. Her father, Francisco José Urrutia, served as foreign minister and carried out diplomatic work with countries such Bolivia, Spain, Switzerland and the United States, which explains the artist’s birthplace of La Paz. Her artistic training was self-guided, through humanities courses during her family’s stays in Europe and later through contact with artists that were reinvigorating Colombian art. During the 1940s, Sofía took classes with the artist Guillermo Wiedemann at his workshop in the Teusaquillo neighborhood of Bogotá, and from that moment he would be a great friend. While the naivety of her work was a quality that was praised from the outset on the artistic circuit, recently there has been discussion around whether the word ‘naive’ is the most accurate description of the creative methods of Sofía Urrutia and other painters from the second half of the 20th century in Colombia. The term “primitivist” has been put forward in modern times to recognize this visual language, in dialogue with artistic trends that developed in other cultural and historical contexts since the beginning of the century. She was a tireless reader until her last days and painted in an authentic and unpretentious style. In her final years, her friends would visit her house to read to her, as her sight had diminished significantly and she was no longer able to read or paint. She passed away in Bogota in 2002.