Formal Manifestations of La Violencia in Modernist Colombian Art: Studies of Villamizar, Obregón, and Botero (2024)

Undergraduate: Dana Bumbalo

Faculty Advisor: Chad Bryant
Department: History

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During the mid-twentieth century, Colombia underwent a decades-long civil war now referred to as la Violencia. As a result of national political disputes, hundreds of thousands were killed, millions displaced or disappeared, and guerrilla warfare spread throughout the countryside. At the same time, a wave of abstract art was sweeping the globe, stemming from artistic hubs such as Paris and New York City. Colombian artists were inspired by this stylistic revolution, and began departing from national realistic conventions of painting into the new realm of modernism. In this paper, I argue that Colombian modernism and its burgeoning varieties of abstraction allowed artists to more adequately convey the terrors of la Violencia. Particularly, Villamizar, Obregón, and Botero utilize new modes of expression to capture a nation grappling with extreme violence for the first time in decades. Modernist abstraction allowed for a rawer exploration of emotion and turmoil, one that extends beyond the surface levels of pictorial nationalism and realism.