“As Luis Hernando Giraldo works he listens to his inner voice. There is no place in his creative world for passing fads or fleeting prisms through which to observe art, and yet he is in tune with his time.” So says Carmen María Jaramillo (b. 1958) in this essay. The curator and art critic confirms this when she examines Giraldo’s paintings, that are the result of profound color studies and a combination of abstract and figurative forms expressed with short brush strokes freely overlaid on large color planes, in some cases merging together to create recognizable shapes. These images could be read as memories or feelings, but although they are perceptible, they are better left undefined, unshackled by any limitation.
Giraldo’s painting is an exercise in communication that relies on his own personal iconography, using symbols that are closely linked to his life experience, the influence of the great painters of the Italian Renaissance and the Romantic periods, and his passion for literature and music. Giraldo’s images are steeped in personal meaning but they also convey lessons in sensibility, poetry, and music.
This document is related to “Una memoria de mineral y musgo, casi” [see doc. no. 1133365].
Jaramillo’s essay reflects on the work of Luis Hernando Giraldo, an artist who is known as a great colorist, creator of his own personal style, and for his work as a teacher. He taught painting on the art faculty at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (1977–80 and 1986–91). He is currently (in 2010) an art instructor at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia at Bogotá, a position he has held since 1999.
Carmen María Jaramillo is an art critic, researcher, and curator. Her publications include: Arte, política y crítica: Una aproximación a la consolidación del arte moderno en Colombia (2005) [doc. no. 1098094]; El mago del Caribe (2001), a book about the painter Alejandro Obregón (1920–92) [doc. no. 1093096]; and Otras Miradas: Other Glances (2004), among others.
