Until this article appeared, critics had always associated the Colombian Abstract artist Manuel Hernández with the major exponents of Abstract art in the United States and Europe, mainly with the Latvian-born North American artist Mark Rothko [Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz]. Hernández, who is unquestionably one of the great Colombian masters of Abstraction, has received honors such as the Gran Orden del Ministerio de Cultura [Grand Order of the Ministry of Culture] (1998) and the Primer Premio en Pintura [First Prize for Painting] at the XII Salón de Artistas Colombianos [12th Colombian Artists Salon] (1961).
Danilo Dueñas, the noted Colombian artist who works in the field of Abstraction, creates installations, and uses detritus and found objects in his work, has frequently expressed his great admiration for Hernández. Dueñas considers Hernández to be his teacher, so he approaches his work from a broader perspective than that of an artist. This article helps to clarify the difference between the Colombian painter’s Abstract work and the work of the North American and European Abstract artists with whom he has been compared, such as Elsworth Kelly. This article insists that Hernandez’s work is firmly rooted in his local environment. Dueñas quotes Hernández to reveal the latter’s strong objection to being grouped under the heading of European modernism or North American movements such as Hard Edge, among others.
The “local” roots mentioned by Dueñas in his article are part of what Hernández describes as an attempt to embrace a local identity by stressing the effect of the tropical light. So, in this sense, the abstraction in Hernández’s work can be understood as a result of his observation of the tropical warmth or perhaps the blurring of the outline of the figures he painted in the Colombian heat. In other words, this feature of his work is not necessarily closely related to European or North American modernism.
