This is a first-person narrative in which Lucy Tejada discusses recollections and biographical details that she thinks had an impact on her work. She takes up the story in her childhood and mentions her memories of cities and spaces where she lived. She talks about her time as a student at boarding school, at the Benalcázar high school in Cali, and at the Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, and recalls her introduction to artistic and intellectual circles when she was a student at Bellas Artes [Fine Arts] (1945-1948). Tejada identifies her paintings, drawings, and prints, beginning with some of her early works from the late 1940s, including the depictions of La Guajira that she produced in Bogota and Madrid, Spain between 1949 and 1956. She mentions the geometric paintings she produced in the late 1950s; her series Breve historia del viento [Brief History of the Wind] from 1961—when she started El Taller [The Studio] in Cali with the Brazilian artist María Thereza Negreiros, the Dutch artist Jan Bartelsman, and the Colombian artist Hernando Tejada; her series Insectos [Insectos] from the early 1960s; she also refers to certain aspects of the series Oxígeno [Oxygen] and Jardines [Gardens] in which she sees an “acute ecological sensitivity.” Tejada refers to her lifelong fascination with nature and her ability to memorize images that she can then use in her work. She acknowledges the influence of Alejandro Obregón. She explains that a fundamental aspect of her work involves her focus on composition. She also admits that one of her main obsessions is her constant exploration of new techniques and themes, which helps to explain the variety in her work and the fact that it is not influenced by fads and fashions. In her opinion, some young artists attempt “strange” things in their work without having had the necessary strict training.  

This article is based on a conversation that took place on August 26, 1997 between the artist Lucy Tejada (b. 1920) and the writer Fernando Cruz Kronfly (b. 1943) who wrote and edited the interview. The conversation provides an overview of Lucy Tejada’s life and her opinions concerning the creation of art, and helps to explain the painting and prints she produced from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. Here Tejada discusses what she believes is necessary to understand her life and work, including her family relationships, her cloistered, restricted childhood, her nomadic nature, her introduction to Bogota’s bohemian artistic and intellectual crowd at the School of Fine Arts and the Café El Automático, her love of nature, her environmental concerns, and her constant formal research and exploration.    

Lucy Tejada is best known in local circles for her series Oxígeno [Oxygen], Jardines [Gardens], Máquinas [Machines], and her other late 1970s works based on childhood iconography or the natural world. But she should also be recognized for having secured her position in the Colombian art world in the mid-1940s. Tejada broke social barriers as she developed into a professional visual artist, just as other Colombian women artists did in their day, including Judith Márquez (1925–94) and Cecilia Porras (1920–71). She was part of the generation of artists who launched a renewal of visual languages during the mid-twentieth century.