Colombian writer Daniel Samper Ortega starts this essay discussing the situation facing the artistic professions in Colombia during the first quarter of the twentieth century. He asserts that the position of writers and visual artists is particularly dire. It is in this unfavorable social context that Colombian painter Roberto Pizano was born. Samper Ortega reviews some of the very few paintings that Pizano made—he estimates that there are no more than twenty-five, which is a very small number considering that Pizano produced more than five thousand sketches. Samper Ortega describes Pizano’s education, influences, and interests, as well as some of his paintings, such as Misa de pueblo [Town Mass], Retrato del doctor Zaldúa [Portrait of Doctor Zaldúa], Portuguesa [Portuguese Woman], and Autorretrato [Self-Portrait].

The work of Colombian painter Roberto Pizano (1896–1929) was not widely studied by his contemporaries; magazines and newspapers of the day mostly concentrated on his administrative work in the realm of culture and his work in education, specifically as the director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Bogotá [Fine Arts School of Bogotá] (now the Escuela de Artes Plásticas of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia).   

In this article, published in 1931—two years after Pizano’s death—writer Daniel Samper Ortega (1895–1943) discusses some of his works, influences, and interests. Samper Ortega was an important figure in the sphere of culture in Colombia in the first half of the twentieth century. He directed institutions in Bogotá, such as the Teatro Colón, the Academia de Bellas Artes, and Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia. 

Pizano was one of the most influential Colombian painters of the first third of the twentieth century. Starting in 1917, he studied at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, where he was influenced by major Spanish painters like Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923) and Julio Romero de Torres (1874–1930). Upon returning to Bogotá, he taught painters like Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo (1910–1970) at the Escuela de Bellas Artes. Pizano wrote a number of books and articles in magazines and newspapers, as well as a monograph entitled “Gregorio Vásquez de Arce y Ceballos: pintor de la ciudad de Santa Fe de Bogotá” [Gregorio Vásquez de Arce y Ceballos: Painter from the City of Santa Fe de Bogotá] (Paris: Camille Bloch Éditeur, 1926). While he was the director of the Escuela de Bellas Artes, he was responsible for the initiative to found the Museo de Reproducciones Artísticas, although it did not open to the public until after his death. The collection, which is currently known as the “Colección Pizano,” is housed at the Museo de Arte of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and at the Museo Nacional of Colombia. He died in Bogotá at the age of thirty-three after an impressive career, furthering art in Colombia.