Luis Hernando Giraldo (b. 1946) is a visual artist born and raised in his hometown of Pácora, in the Caldas province of northwestern Colombia. Giraldo spent most of his free time growing up in the company of his grandparents learning to adopt a slower pace of life and an appreciation for the beauty in daily life. When he left to study art in Botogá at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Giraldo discovered his passion for music upon hearing students practicing their instruments in nearby buildings. He began to visualize those melodies, likening them to art in their common pursuit of ‘the fairest note, the sweetest, most vigorous and sustained sound.’ His love of music and poetry are central to his approach to art, describing his work as a visual equivalent to prose and stanzas in literature.
His body of work consists of rural dreamscapes dotted with references to Caldean geography and local Paisa culture, with nods to Impressionism and Fauvism. Some of the recurring iconography in his portfolio include flowers, livestock, churchgoers in their Sunday best, the fountain in Pacora’s main square, and San Antonio Mountain located just outside the town limits. He imbues his work with the ‘naive’ or ‘childlike’ qualities associated with unconsciousness through use of continuous narrative, nonlinear perspective and a hypersaturated palette. Though for Giraldo, the beauty of art is not measured by its ability to adhere to any certain style or movement; his works exist within a singular, unquantifiable, and continuous present moment.