This 1978 interview with Enrique Grau by artists Álvaro Herazo and Delfina Bernal provides insight into how Grau viewed the art world. In it, Grau discusses his aesthetic concerns and beliefs as a painter, as well as his inclinations and points of view as a human being. In this amusing interview, Herazo and Bernal inquire into a range of topics, among them Grau’s opinion of art criticism, the art market, Colombian art history, technique, figuration, influences on the artist and those he himself has influenced, drawing and painting, and abstraction. This text, then, provides a thorough portrait of this acclaimed Colombian artist.

This text provides valuable information on Enrique Grau (1920-2004) the person and on his pictorial work. It explores the artist’s stance on a range of aesthetic problems and contemporary phenomena.  

Artists Álvaro Herazo (b. 1942) and Delfina Bernal (b. 1946)—both of whom are from Barranquilla—interviewed Grau in 1978, soon after they had founded Grupo 44, a center of Conceptual art and performance in the Colombian Caribbean in the seventies. The interview, then, is an open dialogue between artists with several points of interest. 

First, it is interesting to observe how Grau places himself in Colombian art history, specifically in relation to Alejandro Obregón (1920-1992) and Fernando Botero (b. 1932), and the differences between his aesthetic concerns in the forties and fifties and those of his peers. Similarly illuminating is Grau’s opinion of Argentine art critic Marta Traba (1923–1983), whom he deems a communicator rather than an advocate of Modern art in Colombia. Grau discusses the use of bulky figures in his work and his interest in the expansion of the forms at the core of his compositions, which stand in contrast to soft and light everyday objects. He also reflects on the mestizo appearance of his figures and the relationship between his art and light. In closing, Grau ponders his contribution to the history of Colombian art, particularly in terms of the preeminence of drawing amongst artists from Cartagena and his influence on those artists.

This interview, then, provides valuable information on Enrique Grau and his art at a moment when he had gained international recognition. Five years later, he would move to New York for a long period during which he would explore the visual languages of sculpture.  

Enrique Grau was born in Cartagena de Indias. He entered into the art world when his work Mulata cartagenera [Mulatta from Cartagena] was awarded a mention at the Primer Salón Nacional in 1940. Pursuant to the award, the Colombian government granted him a fellowship to study at the Art Students League of New York. In both New York and Florence, where he would spend a long period in the fifties, Grau furthered his studies. The work he produced in the fifties and sixties was representative of Modern art in Colombia. While living in New York in the eighties, he began to produce sculptures, the last artistic language he would explore in his long career.