This interview by M. I. de la Vega with Blanca Sinisterra de Carreño (1907–1995), who had been awarded first prize at the Ninth Salón Nacional de Artistas Colombianos in 1952, provides insight into the artist as an individual. Sinisterra de Carreño asserts the need for alternatives in art education in Colombia, including options other than formal academies and schools like the Escuela de Bellas Artes of Bogotá. In Sinisterra de Carreño’s view, art education should not be limited to future artists; a more open system in the style of the Académie Julian in Paris should be put into place, where students could pay for a certain number of classes and decide for themselves what to study according to their needs and interests.
When asked what school of painting she belongs to, Sinisterra de Carreño responds point-blank: “Impressionism.” Though by the time of this interview, Impressionism had been largely displaced by new visual languages, internationally as well as in Colombia, nonetheless, the painter states that everyone is an “Impressionist” and that that tendency—unlike others such as Cubism—has persisted well into the twentieth century. Sinisterra de Carreño claims that many artists make use of Impressionist elements without even realizing it. When she asserts that “classicism is nothing but copying,” Sinisterra de Carreño evidences her distance from academicism and art based on exact rendering of reality, as well as her affinity with the artistic movements of the time. Perhaps that is why Colombian critics Casimiro Eiger (1909–1987) and Walter Engel (1908–2005), born in Poland and Austria respectively, considered Sinisterra de Carreño to be a contemporary painter—along with Bolivian artist Sofía Urrutia (1927–2002), fellow Colombian Lucy Tejada (1920?2011), and many others.
