The twentieth century was a turning point for Colombia in almost every aspect: a period of unprecedented economic prosperity and urban migration, but also of conflict, violence, and uncertainty. It was in this duality that many artists and intellectuals found a source of inspiration for their work and even a higher calling to advocate for change. As society tended towards a more progressive future, Colombians began speaking up against injustice, and one of the most significant ways through which this critique was shared was art. Beginning in the 1950s, a new generation of female artists succeeded in establishing Bogotá as a nexus of cultural tradition and contemporary artistic production, bringing European modernism to Latin America. This exhibition explores this history through the works of women who subverted the concept of Fine Art in Colombia, and those whose careers brought them to international heights: Emma Reyes, Olga de Amaral, Feliza Bursztyn, Fanny Sanín, and Ana Mercedes Hoyos — as well as Juliana Ríos, a contemporary artist whose practice continues this powerful legacy in the present day.
Olga de Amaral and Feliza Bursztyn are remembered as pioneers in their adoption of unconventional mediums, which defied all expectations of what could be considered “Fine Art.” When Bursztyn presented her first series Chatarras(1961), she received a scornful review by art critic Walter Engel on her use of scrap metal as an artistic medium. Undeterred, she continued working with scrap metal — a decision that would define her oeuvre, earn her national accolades, and even cause Engel to recant only three years later. Olga de Amaral, on the other hand, experimented with longstanding textile traditions, creating new knotting and braiding techniques, leaving warps “unwoven” or “weftless,” as well as gilding fibers as a nod to pre-Columbian goldwork. The result are shimmering three-dimensional structures whose structural complexity allows them to be hung up or stand on their own as sculptures.
Fanny Sanín and Ana Mercedes Hoyos diverted from conservative academic standards in two dimensions. Sanín is well known for what she produced in her later career: hard-edge abstract compositions consisting of flat, geometric shapes in vivid colors with an obvious axis of symmetry. Her earlier paintings, however, were far more gestural — her initial style was much informed by contemporaries like Elaine de Kooning and Lee Krasner, capturing a sense of movement through curving forms she would later replace with straight lines and sharp corners. Conversely, Ana Mercedes Hoyos’s first series of paintings, Ventanas (1969), is among the most widely recognized accomplishments of her career and earned her First Prize in the National Artists Salon of 1978 in Bogotá. The square, minimalist compositions are organized around windows opening onto vibrant blue skies at different times of day. In her following series, Atmósferas (1978), Hoyos brings the viewer through the window and explores the depths of color focused in light by layering hues between coats of white to illustrate a nebulous atmosphere. Her later paintings would include more easily discernible subjects with a special interest in Afro-Colombian culture, underscoring the importance of Colombia’s minority communities in national identity.
Born in Armenia, Quindío, Juliana Ríos represents a living continuation of this artistic lineage. As the only contemporary artist in this exhibition, her practice bridges past and present, translating the spirit of her predecessors into today’s social realities. Deeply connected to La Guajira, Colombia’s northeastern Caribbean province, through her maternal roots, Ríos finds in this region both inspiration and purpose. Like Hoyos, she sheds light on the daily lives of Guajiros, but her gaze goes further — transcending the anecdotal and engaging with broader questions of inequality, gender, and tradition. Her work combines impressionist sensibilities with a strong social commitment, confronting issues such as child motherhood, migration, and limited opportunities in the region. In doing so, Ríos continues and reinterprets the visual and ethical legacy left by earlier generations of women artists, proving that their revolutionary impulse remains alive and urgent.
Emma Reyes’s avant-garde style reflects her tumultuous upbringing and the unique life she led thereafter. Abandoned at a young age with only her sister for family, she spent fifteen years of her youth in a convent, isolated from the outside world. When she finally left, she became a traveler, roaming from city to city and selling Scott’s Emulsion to support herself. During this time of extreme hardship, she turned to art as a means of self-expression, drawing upon anecdotal experience and Colombian cultural iconography as a visual language. Her drawings served as a means to articulate the complex and often difficult experiences she had, which she believed ought to be written down to be shared with others. Eventually, she found her way to Buenos Aires, where she quickly earned a scholarship to study in Paris. There she joined the circles of intellectuals like Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Though she settled in France, she continued to travel the world, finding time to dedicate herself to her art and her writing. Her memoir, Memoria por correspondencia (2012), includes heartbreaking stories from her childhood and the inspirational journey she took to overcome them.
Emma Reyes’s story resonates deeply with the experiences of her contemporaries, who also turned adversity into creation. Like Bursztyn, de Amaral, Sanín, and Hoyos, Reyes defied the limitations imposed upon women in a male-dominated artistic landscape. Yet her work and her writing added another layer to this legacy: an autobiographical dimension that fused personal memory with collective history. Her paintings and letters offered a vision of Colombia seen through the eyes of those often excluded from its artistic canon — the marginalized, the forgotten, the women who persevered.
Taken together, the artists in this exhibition chart the evolution of Colombian art through the lens of women who transformed constraint into expression. From the industrial sculptures of Bursztyn and the luminous textiles of de Amaral to Sanín’s precise abstractions, Hoyos’s meditations on light and culture, and Ríos’s contemporary reflections on social reality, each one expanded the limits of what art could represent. Emma Reyes stands as both precursor and symbol — a reminder that creativity can arise from hardship, and that the act of making art is itself a form of resistance.
Ultimately, these women redefined the narrative of Colombian modernity. Their works not only marked new aesthetic territories but also forged a visual language of emancipation — one that continues to inspire future generations to question, to create, and to speak through art.
