In this article, the poet and critic Jorge Gaitán Durán discusses the development of sculptor Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar as a painter. The author outlines the artist’s career and refers to some of the artist’s technical traits; he praises the clear, sharp lines in Ramírez Villamizar’s early drawings, but criticizes his use of light and color, and the excessive influence of academicism. He then identifies a period of artistic freedom and self-discovery that consolidates the artist’s individual expression, as can be seen in works such as Entierro de sombras [Burial of Shadows]. The critic goes on to mention that Ramírez Villamizar’s works were exhibited at the Young Artists’ Salon that year, although they strike him as lacking in terms of their reference to humanity. In this critic’s opinion, it was not until late 1947?when this article was published?that the painter’s work began to express the humanity that was absent from his earlier output. Gaitán Durán ends his article with praise and encouraging words about Ramírez Villamizar’s career and his place in Colombian art of that period.    

In this article, the Colombian poet and critic Jorge Gaitán Durán (1924–1962) writes about Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (1922–2004) a promising twenty-four-year-old artist who was exploring the potential of modern painting. Both men were from the state of Norte de Santander, and were working to make names for themselves in the art world in Bogotá.

This article documents the emergence of new artistic languages in Colombia in the 1940s, in painting and sculpture as well as in the field of art criticism. This article appeared in the Revista de las Indias [Indies Magazine] (published by the Ministry of Education), in a section on the “Visual Arts” that featured discussions on painting, sculpture, theater, and music. It is interesting to note that an official magazine saw fit to support modern art movements and invite a critic who was barely twenty-three years old at the time to write about emerging artists. This demonstrates that in those days, artists in Colombia were in a position to promote an understanding of the languages of modern art.

In the late 1940s, Ramírez Villamizar started exploring the language of abstraction, which would influence all his subsequent work. It is interesting to note how art criticism was developing hand-in-hand with the development of the visual arts. As the poet was establishing his critical credentials, the artist was experimenting with the three-dimensional and geometric expression in which he excelled during the mid-twentieth century.  

In 1947, Jorge Gaitán Durán, a young member of the upper class, was one of the most promising poets and intellectuals in Colombia. He had studied law at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, and often wrote about art exhibitions and aesthetic matters. Early that year he and the critic Luis Vidales Jaramillo (1900–1990) organized the Salón de Artistas Jóvenes [Young Artists’ Salon], an event that introduced the work of many Colombian masters in the field of modern art, most notably Edgar Negret (b. 1920) and Ramírez Villamizar.