SEVEN ARTISTS: COLOMBIAN GEOMETRIC ABSTRACTION

Colombian geometric abstraction constitutes a different chapter altogether—unalike, heterogeneous, never subject to any sort of manifesto or movement—in the development of this powerful current that traversed the continent. The singularity, the rareness, if you wish, or the insistence on treading their own path of artists born in Colombia between the 1920s and 1940s who devoted their lives to this creative form, has made it difficult to incorporate them into major international exhibitions of geometric art: it was not possible to classify them strictly within concretism or neoconcretism, nor within Madi or kinetic art, nor, in short, to establish pure adherence by them to any of the movements that moved away from any “expression, representation or meaning”¹.

And, nonetheless, the seven essential artists that Durban Segnini Gallery presents—Edgar Negret (1920-2012), Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (1922-2004), Carlos Rojas (1923-1997), Omar Rayo (1928-2010), Fanny Sanín (1938), Manolo Vellojín (1942-2013) and Germán Botero (1946)—created, and some continue to create, a set of works of inarguable value in the history of modern and contemporary Latin American art. With the exception of the legendary French gallery owner Denis Rene, who exhibited the works of some of these artists, no other gallery has contributed so much decade after decade to recognizing those individual, diverse and divergent paths of Colombian geometric abstraction. For that reason precisely, there are pieces of utmost significance and value among those being exhibited.