In 1927, the painter Eladio Vélez, from Antioquia, fulfilled his dream of going to study in Europe. The letters he wrote to his family when he was a student in Europe have been copied and kept. In the one selected here (written on April 9, 1927), to his mother and sisters in Medellín, he describes his first impression of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, and his life in the Quartier Latin [Latin Quarter] where he had yearned to live, “where painters show and sell their paintings in the open air, because selling paintings here is like selling bananas in the Itagüí Plaza” in his home town. He mentions the many sculptures and decorations on the façade of the Palais du Louvre: “You just have to close your eyes and go inside because if you start looking at everything you’ll never get to see it,” he wrote. In his letter he describes going to visit the Colombian sculptor Marco Tobón Mejía, whose assistant he later became: “(…) he made me feel very welcome; he is a simple type, like every wise man, and we have become good friends.” He ends his letter by describing how he is getting on with learning French: “(…) I am not doing as badly as I thought I would; though I don’t say much I manage to make myself understood, and little by little I am getting better.” His outlook, the expression of a young adult who is discovering art in the Old World and adapting to a new culture, changed over the course of his stay in Europe, which lasted until April 1931.     

The coveted trip to Europe was the ultimate dream of artists from Antioquia (the area around Medellín), especially since Francisco Antonio Cano (1865–1935) had managed to go there from 1898 to 1901, owing to the support of the Colombian government and the funds raised at a cultural event held in Medellín.

There are very few existing documents written by artists from Antioquia in the early twentieth century. It is therefore not hard to understand the documentary interest in the letters that the painter Eladio Vélez (1897–1967) wrote to his family and friends, copies of which were later published. His intimate, colloquial letters give us an insight into the difficulties, fears, and uncertainties of a marginal painter from Latin America exploring European culture and confronting the grand ideals of his youth. His narratives describe his travails when he lost his luggage, his constant poverty, and his vain hope of receiving official support that never materialized, and also reveals the psychological state of a young artist from the peripheral world who is disappointed to discover that the high price he must pay for his youthful dream of being “chained to art” is loneliness, poverty, and uncertainty about his future. He was barely compensated for all these hardships with a certain amount of recognition, such as having a self-portrait and a bronze sculpture accepted at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Françaises [Society of French Artists] in 1930.