Álvaro Marín Vieco was born in Medellín in 1946, into a family of musicians and artists— immersed from an early age in a creative environment shaped by rhythm, listening, and visual exploration. He began his studies in architecture at the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in 1965, but the following year moved to Bogotá to pursue fine arts at the Universidad Nacional. However, he chose to drop out and irreverently dedicate his life to painting.
Throughout his career, Marín has focused on abstraction. He was part of the so-called group “Los once de Medellin” which emerged following an exhibition of the same name held at the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art in 1975. Supported by the influential gallerist, curator, and critic Alberto Sierra, the group marked a significant moment in shaping the city’s artistic identity and promoting the regional decentralization of visual arts in Colombia—a time notably energized by the Coltejer Biennials.
Chromatic Landscapes highlights the artist's exploration of color, tone, and how it shifts, interacts, and shapes perception. In this exhibition, the works represent the culmination of Álvaro Marín’s creative process and his unique approach to the landscape. These explorations are manifested in a selection of works that organize and reveal how colors and tonalities change throughout the day, taking inspiration from the atmospheres of landscape painters such as Antonio Barrera and William Turner.
Marín invites viewers to contemplate through a distinctive visual language based on compositions built through the layering of forms and the use of geometry as a structural element. His works reflect chromatic transitions generated by changes in light—from the soft ochers of dawn to the intense blues of midday, moving through the dramatic reds and purples of sunset, and finally fading into the greys and deep blues of night.
Marín’s interpretive tools—such as synthesis and systematization—allow him to narrate the landscape in a singular way, transforming the visual experience into a sensory construction where light and color intertwine.
Chromatic Landscapes invites the viewer to experience the landscape as an emotional and meditative journey, where rationality and emotion merge through chromatic subtleties. This series of works proposes a contemplative pause—a deep reflection on the interplay between light and color.
