Critic Luis Fernando Valencia calls the most recent exhibition of works by Hugo Zapata, which was held at the Medellín Chamber of Commerce, “the best set of works [this artist] has ever exhibited.” Valencia praises Zapata’s work in silkscreen, which he claims is closely connected to reality, that is, to “a particular world that seems to exist independently of the artist.” He also argues that the restriction of the geometric form in Zapata’s work is offset by the free use of color, giving rise to a visual aesthetic that formulates “an ideology of action” since it takes real factors as well as the strange and the alien into account.

This document is a laudatory analysis of the graphic work that Colombian sculptor Hugo Zapata (b. 1945) produced at the beginning of his career. The work that this text discusses is largely unknown, since Zapata is mostly recognized as a sculptor who works in stone. In his earlier prints, such as the series Ritos y Rituales [Rites and Rituals] (1978), images of which this document contains, Zapata’s work addressed formal issues; he produced nonrepresentational works in the print medium that began an exploration of texture that the artist would later pursue in his approach to the surface material used in his sculpture. 

In 1979, Zapata produced the Estelas [Stelae] series of silkscreens; these works are suggestive of monolithic forms inspired by Chinese philosophical texts engraved on flat rocks. When Zapata began his artistic career, one of the most widely known printmakers in Medellín was Aníbal Gil (b. 1932). The art scene in Medellín of the seventies was dominated by artists with a marked urban tendency, that is, artists who addressed the theme of the city; Gil and Zapata were not representative of that trend. Zapata’s graphic work was mainly nonfigurative as it dealt with textures left by the passage of time on rock or—particularly after his trip to China—on stone. 

Hugo Zapata studied art at the Universidad de Antioquia from 1963 to 1966. In 1972, he received a degree in architecture from the Universidad Nacional of Colombia (Medellín campus), and in 1977, he formed part of a group of artists that founded the Visual Arts Program at that same university. Zapata was the first director of that program. He later directed Arte Serial, an experimental printmaking workshop in Medellín. He took part in a number of important exhibitions in the seventies, among them Once antioqueños (1975) at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá, and Novísimos Colombianos (1977), an exhibition organized by art critic Marta Traba (1923–1983) at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Caracas. 

Luis Fernando Valencia (b. 1946) is a well known art critic from Medellín. A professor of visual arts at the Universidad Nacional of Colombia (Medellín campus), he has a master’s degree in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. He has been a member of the jury of Colombian and international art events.