In this essay, the curator Carmen María Jaramillo discusses the work of Manuel Hernández in great detail, mentioning his artistic sense of place and his references to the context of art and the history of Colombia. Jaramillo describes Hernández as “insular,” wedged between the generation of Alejandro Obregón Rosés, Enrique Grau Araujo, Edgar Negret, and Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar and the subsequent generation that included artists such as Beatriz González, Bernardo Salcedo, and Carlos Rojas. Jaramillo puts considerable distance between Hernández and Obregón when she quotes the critic Leslie Judy Allender who said that Hernández was the only Colombian artist who was not strongly influenced by Obregón. This essay appeared in one of the leaflets containing articles devoted to artists of significant importance and/or presence in the Banco de la República de Colombia’s art collection. Hernández has been described as one of the most important Abstract artists in Colombia, having been awarded the Gran Orden del Ministerio de Cultura [Grand Order of the Ministry of Culture] (1998), and the First Prize for painting at the XII Salón de Artistas Colombianos [12th Colombian Artists Salon] (1961). In addition to Jaramillo’s in-depth review, the leaflet includes a list of Hernández’s most important exhibitions up to 2005 (when the leaflet was published), his honors, and his prizes. Jaramillo’s sources for this essay included transcripts of Hernández’s conversations with the journalist José Hernández and with Camilo Calderón, as well as key catalogue texts, such as Manuel Hernández, published by the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá in 1983.

This essay, which appeared in one of the leaflets devoted to the Banco de la República’s collection of Colombian art, is a thoughtful review that builds on the debate originally started by the artist Danilo Dueñas (b. 1956), (see doc. # 1099261) that explored the local roots that are apparent in the work of the artist Manuel Hernández (b. 1928). The critic Carmen María Jaramillo states that his “sense of place”—referring to climate and environments—is the most abstract to be found in Colombian visual arts. She further claims that it was not until the interviews arranged as part of the tribute organized by the Ministry of Culture in the late twentieth century that this aspect of Hernández’s work could be discussed. In her essay, Jaramillo posits that Hernández’s painting reflects his observation of the tropical light and environment. She goes on to make a clear distinction between his paintings and the work of other European and North American Abstract artists with whom he is compared (including Mark Rothko who is most frequently mentioned in this context), pointing to the fact that subjectivity is always of greater importance to Hernández than the presumed autonomy of art. 

A significant feature of Jaramillo’s essay is that it seeks to establish a connection between Hernández and major figures in the field of Colombian letters, such as Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1927), Álvaro Mutis (b. 1923), and Álvaro Cepeda Samudio (1926–1972). This comparison is based on the fact that they all refer to Colombia’s physical environment in their work, which reaffirms the need to position Hernández’s works among those that attempt to define a local identity. This helps to locate (situation = location) the work of Manuel Hernández at the center of the controversy—an ongoing subtext in twentieth-century Latin American art—that strives to define Latin America in terms that refute Eurocentric classifications.