Alejandro Obreg?n

(b Barcelona, 1920). Colombian painter, printmaker, draughtsman and sculptor of Spanish birth. After studying in Spain, France and at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1937-41), he began his career in Colombia in the mid-1940s with paintings in a naturalistic style. He soon developed a more expressionist idiom based to some degree also on Cubism in its reconstruction of multiple fragmented figures. Gradually extending his range of colour and defining his motifs as signs and symbols of his culture, he favoured images such as mangrove swamps, volcanoes, condors, bulls and gannets. Much of the expressive power of his work was based on striking contrasts, for example between energetic brushwork and fine detail, between mysterious glazes and imposing figures, or between muted grey areas and areas of bright contrasting colours. Direct references to reality co-exist with allusions to magic, enigmas and fantasy. In 1956 he won the Gulf-Caribbean Art Prize for Cattle Crossing the Magdalena (1955; Houston, TX, Mus. F.A.).

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