Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, the last of the four artists
to whom this exhibition is dedicated, was born in Pamplona, in the Northeast
part of Colombia, in 1923. He originally planned to be an architect and
took up studies to that end at the National University in 1940. After a
few semesters, however, he abandoned architecture in favor of fine arts.
Ramírez Villamizar began his career as a painter, along abstract
lines, as exemplified here by his 1954 oil on canvas, Yellow-Red-Black.
Gradually his work moved from virtual space to three-dimensional space.
The coherence and consistency of his development have given his work remarkable
substantiality.
In 1950, Ramírez Villamizar traveled to France, staying until
1952. Thereafter came frequent trips to New York, Paris, Madrid and Rome,
some for purposes of exhibiting his work. In 1957, he agreed to give classes
at the School of Fine Arts in Bogotá. That year he completed his
first reliefs, mostly in white; they were reminiscent of the work of Anthony
Caro and architectonic in spatial concept. The architectonic note is characteristic
of his work in general, as is evident from Leaning Vertical Architecture
in this exhibition.
Ramírez Villamizar has received a number of awards, including
the Guggenheim Prize for Colombia in 1958 and the first prize for painting
at the Twelfth Salon of Colombian artists, in 1959. He represented Colombia
at the Fifth São Paulo Biennial together with Obregón, Wiedemann
and others. In the exhibit "South American Art Today," held at
the Dallas Museum, his work appeared along with that of Obregón,
Grau, Negret and a rising young star, Fernando Botero, nine years Ramírez
Villamizar's junior.
Undoubtedly, however, the most significant event in the artist's career
was his turn to sculpture, marked by his 1958 commission to do a mural for
the Bank of Bogotá. With great sensitivity he combined elements of
geometric abstraction, pre-Columbian designs of his own invention and the
magnificent spatial and textural effects of Hispano-Colombian colonial baroque
altars in a composition in wood covered with gold leaf. The result is a
spectacular relief in which the viewer can observe contrasting elements
of Colombia's artistic past, presented in contemporary language.
Since the 1960s, Negret and Ramírez Villamizar have been the recognized
masters of Colombian sculpture. Negret received the prize for the field
at the 1963 Fifteenth National Salon of Artists; in 1966, at the Seventeenth
Salon, it went to Ramírez Villamizar. Like Obregón before
him, in 1969 Ramírez Villamizar represented Colombia at the Tenth
São Paulo Biennial with an entire room dedicated to his works alone.
On that occasion he received the second prize for sculpture at the international
level.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ramírez Villamizar figured
regularly on the international scene centered in New York, with shows at
commercial galleries and exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim
Museum. He received commissions for monumental works from private corporations
and public institutions. While he experimented with new materials, iron
has been his preferred medium in recent years. Coming from this period are
the two 1967 acrylics, entitled Vertical Relief and Horizontal
Relief.
A special event in Ramírez Villamizar's career was the 1973 installation
of his composition, From Colombia to John F. Kennedy, in Washington,
D.C. The work, a gift of the Colombian government, is sited in the gardens
of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In the same year, two other
monumental pieces by the artist were installed in New York City, in Fort
Tryon Park and at Beach High School. |
