Written in Paris on April 29, 1918, this letter from sculptor Marco Tobón Mejía to his friend Carlos E. Restrepo reveals the nature of the relationship between the Colombian artist and one of the most important representatives of Colombia’s intellectual, economic, and political elite of the time. Without Restrepo’s support, Tobón Mejía would not have been able to subsist, let alone to produce a number of his most important works. The artist mentions different aspects of his work, including his progress on a monument to Francisco Javier Cisneros, the Cuban engineer who constructed the celebrated railway in the Antioquia region. Regarding that work, Tobón Mejía analyzes the relationship between the pedestal and the figure and discusses his dealings with the Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas, which had commissioned the piece. Tobón Mejía also writes of his progress on the sculpture Silencio [Silence] which, like the monument to Cisneros, is one of this artist’s greatest works.

In Medellín, sculptor Marco Tobón Mejía (1876-1933) had worked in the print and painting media, as well as making caricatures. He studied with Francisco Antonio Cano (1865-1935), with whom he published the magazine Lectura y Arte. Years later, when he discovered he was color blind, Tobón Mejía turned to sculpture. In 1905, he traveled to Havana where he worked as an illustrator; in 1909, he went from there to Paris, where he faced great economic hardship until he was named the Colombian consul in Genoa. In 1914, he returned to France where he got married and received an honorary mention at the Salon.  To get by financially during World War I, he performed a number of different craft-related jobs. He died of tuberculosis in 1933, a condition that was worsened due to the marble dust to which he was exposed while making his sculptures. An artist close to the Symbolist and Art Nouveau movements, Tobón Mejía’s work consists chiefly of small-format reliefs in metal and large commemorative and monumental works in marble and bronze.  

From 1910 to 1933, while he was in Italy and France, Tobón Mejía corresponded on a regular basis with his friend and patron Carlos E. Restrepo (1867-1937), who was president of Colombia from 1910 to 1914. Those letters do not contain reflections on art, but rather descriptions of Tobón Mejía’s circumstances, comments on works in progress, and requests for direly needed financial support; in response to those requests, Restrepo ultimately named Tobón Mejía Colombian consul in Genoa. In the last of the existing letters, Tobón Mejía asks Restrepo about financial matters related to a number of setbacks he had experienced. He remarks on articles published in the press as well as his health problems. In the final later, dated January 20, 1933, Tobón Mejía writes “I am now doing small jobs which don’t take much time and afford me much needed rest as I await something important.”