In this article, Germán Rubiano Caballero discusses his impressions of the paintings and drawings included in the first solo exhibition of works by Sonia Gutiérrez, who was at the time in her final semester on the art faculty at the Universidad Nacional. The critic and art historian states that the defining characteristic of Gutiérrez’s work is its expression “of the vast, rich memories of her childhood.” He refers to a lengthy quote from Letters to a Young Poet (1929) by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who advises his fellow poets to write about what they see in their everyday life, and if that proves hard to do, to look back on their memories of childhood. Rubiano Caballero describes the formal resources that the artist uses in the creation of her work: drawings of decorative spaces and motifs that she uses in free compositions that “are undeniably inspired by an ‘advertising’ background”; acrylic paintings in which the lines are mainly used to arrange the planes and suggest novel compositions in which the colors draw the eye to certain planes or decorative elements. He ends his review with a discussion of the evolution of Gutiérrez’s work in terms of her “clear idea of form.” He also mentions the work that earned her the prize at the III Salón Croydon [Third Croydon Salon] at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá in 1966, in order to point out that her recent work has been purged of all excess detail in pursuit of the kind of simplicity that “is essential if one is to speak the little great truths with absolute honesty.”  

The Colombian artist Sonia Gutiérrez (b. 1947) first became known in art circles in the late 1960s as a result of her first solo exhibition at the National Library in 1967, referred to in this article, and her participation in 1968 in the following group competitions: Muestra de Arte Colombiano [Colombian Art Exhibition] at the Luis Ángel Arango Library, the group exhibition Los que son [Those That Are] at Marta Traba’s gallery (both in Bogotá), and the l Bienal de Coltejer [First Coltejer Biennial] in Medellín. Her paintings in those days included pictorial and thematic elements that recalled the language of Pop Art, especially the thick lines and color planes that evoked everyday scenes in which faceless people hold conversations or share a romantic moment or a fleeting encounter; each of them alone, surrounded by colored backgrounds. In this article, the critic and art historian Germán Rubiano Caballero (b. 1938) refers to their solitary state and associates it with a quote from Letters to a Young Poet (1929) by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926).  

In the early years of her career, Sonia Gutiérrez responded to the renewal of artistic values that were being explored by a group of young artists who appropriated images from the media and from urban life. In her case, she portrays this world through the surface qualities of her works and the ornamental properties of the fashions and the environments of the period. In the 1970s, Sonia Gutiérrez’s art changed radically as she developed an openly political approach. This eventually led to her exile from the country in the mid-1990s, which put an end to her involvement in the local Colombian art scene. In her paintings, silkscreens, and linoleum prints, she condemned torture and persecution with symbolic references to cloth and rope bonds on unidentified bodies. These days (2010) her work is frequently exhibited in Switzerland.