Curated by Maria Elvira Ardila

Modernity in Colombian art reflected a profound yearning that artists held to create new forms of art and philosophy that manifested the changes of a developing world. It was a time of transformation and thus, the advent of finding ways of seeing that transgressed hegemonic thinking. Part of the principles of modern art is the rupture of academia and tradition. Mimesis of reality is replaced by conceptual and formal freedom. There is a search for experimentation, the implementation of new languages, and the artist’s search for independence. The loss of the aura of the works, the eagerness to innovate, and the opening of exhibitions to all audiences are evidence of this paradigm shift. In Colombia, artists appropriated the styles derived from the first avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. Therefore, the use of these new languages led to the consolidation of artists who were breaking into a world that followed the line of progress brought by modernity.

The exhibition The Consolidation of Modernity in Colombia at Casa Zirio gives the audience a glimpse of this process with a unique selection of paintings and sculptures by artists such as: Alejandro Obregón, Alicia Tafur, Álvaro Barrios, Ana Mercedes Hoyos, Antonio Caro, Armando Villegas, Beatriz González, Bernardo Salcedo, Carlos Rojas, Cecilia Porras, David Manzur, Édgar Negret, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Enrique Grau, Feliza Bursztyn, Fernando Botero, Freda Sargent, Gonzalo Ariza, Guillermo Wiedemann, Hernán Díaz, Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo, Juan Antonio Roda, Manuel Hernández, Marco Ospina, Norman Mejía, Omar Rayo and Santiago Cárdenas.