La poetisa, galerista y crítica de arte Gloria Inés Daza conversa con Leonel Góngora sobre las motivaciones artísticas que desencadenaron su “obra erótica”; la muerte que azota a una sociedad “convencional y pacata” como la colombiana; y sus interpretaciones acerca del expresionismo y la realidad actual del país vista desde la perspectiva del “pintor secreto” (cuño o seudónimo del propio Góngora). En el diálogo se entrevé cómo surgieron ambas obsesiones temáticas en su obra: el erotismo y la violencia. En especial, cuando menciona que su generación pasó, de una educación (católica) basada en la drástica represión sexual, a ver “el espectáculo sangriento y grotesco de la violencia”. Cuando las preguntas de la conversación se enfocan a conocer quién es el “pintor secreto” o “provocador de cultura”, Góngora se pronuncia como un fuerte crítico de la realidad colombiana y señala: “somos prisioneros de nuestras pasiones” (parafraseando su serie de dibujos Prisioneros de sus pasiones). El “pintor secreto”, en suma, es un alter ego cuyo anonimato le permite sacudirse, sin concesiones, “todas nuestras caducas convenciones momificadas”.

The dialogue between Gloria Inés Daza and the Colombian artist Leonel Góngora (1932–99) starts by presenting the interviewer’s initial concern about the reception of the “erotic work” in a country she describes as “moralistic.” It then goes on to show us the artist’s interest in expressing his critical perception of Colombian culture. According to Góngora, the short story is that his work recreates the images banned during his childhood due to the repression fostered by orthodox Catholicism. It also illustrates the resurgence of violence in Colombia (1940s and 1950s) in episodes that “traumatized” his generation.

Throughout his life as an artist, Góngora’s work was identified with eroticism and expressive, representational art. His nudes (especially women) connote sexuality; moreover, “they challenge both life and death,” fighting moral repression, as prisoners of pleasure. The file Secuencia cinematográfica del beso y del abrazo (1977), introduced by Daza’s text, has reproductions of 16 pen and ink drawings (drawn in 1976) of intimate scenes of couples tangled by a dynamic, sensual line that made the artist’s figures so recognizable.

In 1950, Góngora enrolled in the Escuela de Bellas Artes of Bogotá (which is now the Escuela de Artes Plásticas at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia). Two years later, he traveled to the United States to study at the School of Fine Arts at Washington University (Saint Louis, Missouri). Góngora went there in pursuit of its instruction influenced by the German painter Max Beckmann, the Expressionist artist who was a professor there from 1947 to 1949. The university experience and the German Expressionist works influenced his interest in figurative work, the distortion of the form, Expressionist realism and the social values of the human being. Around 1959, after Góngora earned his university degree, he undertook a long journey through Europe, where he had the opportunity to see the paintings of Francisco de Goya and the work of Caravaggio, two painters that stood out for him in art history, as he admitted to the interviewer. In 1961, Góngora reached Mexico City, where he had an experience that was important to his life as an artist. During his stay, he joined the Mexican group Interiorista or Nueva Presencia, whose aesthetic purpose was to stimulate a revival of figurative art based on humanistic ideas during the 1960s.