Translations:Teresa Cuéllar “Teyé”/6/en

Upon completing her university education, Teresa Cuéllar became involved in the Bogota art scene, practicing painting and exhibiting her work in national and young artists’ shows. Between 1960 and 1961 she carried out a specialization at the University of Rome, and on her return to Colombia was responsible for giving drawing classes at the University of Los Andes, where she taught for 8 years. From this period her interest in still lifes stands out, as made evident by various individual exhibitions in galleries in Bogotá, Cali, Medellín and Barranquilla. Exhibition titles such as Naturalezas vivas (Living still lifes), Acercamientos vivos (Living approaches) and Neobodegones (Neo-still lifes) hinted at a novel way of tackling still lifes through the management of color, format and technique. Without neglecting her work with still lifes, from the 1970s Cuéllar featured in exhibitions on Colombian sketchers and Hispano-American printmakers. It was a time when many artists were expressing great enthusiasm for printmaking techniques, and producing their creations in graphic workshops in cities such as Cali and Bogotá. During this decade, Teyé took part in the graphic arts biennials that took place in Cali and entered the MoMA collection in 1973 with the lithograph “La niña de papel” (The paper girl). Around the mid-1980s, Teyé was mentioned as one of the greats of Colombian art, and as one of the leading female exponents of painting in the country. She maintained a healthy and consistent rate of production until the 1990s, and at the start of the decade she moved to a family farm in Chia, a municipality that borders with the capital Bogotá, where she would develop a new focus on landscapes. Her landscapes, such as those exhibited in early 2014 in the Débora Arango Hall of the Economic Culture Fund, portray the colors and textures that usually go unnoticed by the inhabitants of the Bogotá plain. This work to represent her environment has developed in tandem with her family’s restoration and revitalization of the plot of land where the farm is located, which for many years was used as a quarry and left in an advanced state of erosion.