Eduardo Serrano Rueda (b. 1939) studied anthropology and art history at New York University. He was the director of the Galería Belarca (until 1974), and curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno [Museum of Modern Art] in Bogotá (1974–94). Later in his career he was the arts director at the Colombian Ministry of Culture, and was the director of cultural affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Colombia). He is currently the curator at the Chamber of Commerce in Bogotá and an independent art critic. The essay “La obra de Ever Astudillo” [The Work of Ever Astudillo] in the exhibition catalogue was written by Eduardo Serrano, the art critic and curator of Colombian art, who is very familiar with the work of Ever Astudillo (b. 1948), the artist from Cali. During the 1970s Astudillo was involved in several exhibitions that Serrano reviewed for national newspapers. The exhibition referred to here, Ever Astudillo: De la memoria urbana [Ever Astudillo: From Urban Memory] (September 8 to October 30, 2006), was supported by a number of cultural and educational organizations in Cali, including the Facultad de Artes Integradas [Faculty of Integrated Arts] of the Universidad del Valle and the Secretaría de Cultura y Turismo [Department of Culture and Tourism] of Cali. The show was curated by Serrano and included drawings, photographs, sketches, and paintings exhibited in twelve separate rooms during the two-month period. The curatorial plan organized the exhibition under the same headings that are used in this introduction. Here, for the first time, the public could appreciate Astudillo’s still photographs of popular movies from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, and documentary photographs taken in the 1970s in the eastern part of Cali, one of his major sources of inspiration. During the course of the exhibition there was a festival of popular Mexican movies from the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1970s Astudillo was awarded the prize for drawing at the Bienal Americana de Artes Gráficas [American Biennial of Graphic Arts] and the XXIV Salón Nacional de Artistas [XXIV National Artists’ Salon] (both in 1973). After 1975 he worked as a docent at the Facultad de Artes [Faculty of the Arts] at Cauca University and continued producing art and showing his works in galleries around the country.