This article was written by Galaor Carbonell (1938–96), the Cuban-born art critic living in Colombia, on the occasion of the retrospective of work by the Valencian-Venezuelan artist Juan Antonio Roda (1921–2003) at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá in October 1972. The exhibition included Roda’s works from 1963 through 1972. Among the various articles that appeared in the local press, this one in particular identifies formal and thematic aspects of the metal plates Roda had recently begun engraving.
After settling in Colombia in 1955 Roda had a prolific career as a painter, printmaker, and university professor. In 1970 he became a Colombian citizen. In this retrospective, his painting period is represented by the series: Felipes, Tumbas [Graves], Autorretratos [Self-Portraits], Cristos [Christs], and Ventanas [Windows]; El desconocido [The Stranger] and La risa [Laughter] are from his drawing and printmaking period. A year earlier, Roda had been awarded first prize for printmaking at the Ia. Bienal Americana de Artes Gráficas [First American Graphic Arts Biennial] in Cali (see “Primera Bienal Americana de Artes Gráficas. Dibujo. Grabado. Diseño Gráfico” [First American Graphic Arts Biennial: Drawing, Printmaking, [and] Graphic Design], doc. no. 1075853).
At the time of the retrospective, Roda was working on his submissions to printmaking biennials in Buenos Aires and Tokyo. He was also a member of the Colombian Cultural Institute’s Visual Arts Advisory Board (Colcultura), the group responsible for selecting participants for the XXIII Salón de Artistas Nacionales [Twenty-Third National Artists Salon] (see “El primer Salón oficial” [The First Official Salon], doc. no. 1076604).
Carbonell was an art critic, university professor, painter, cofounder and publisher of the magazine Arte en Colombia. In 1966 he settled in Colombia and a year later took Marta Traba’s place as art history professor at the Universidad de los Andes.