The article “Primera biografía: Un pintor primitivo genuino” [First Biography: A Genuine Primitive Painter] by Álvaro Cepeda Samudio (1926–1972) describes the time when the Cuban art critic José Gómez Sicre (1916–1991) visited the Colombian primitive painter Noé León (1907–1978). This was a significant occasion because the Cuban critic had come to report that León’s paintings were about to be exhibited abroad. At that time, Gómez Sicre was the director of the Visual Arts Division of the Pan-American Union (now the Organization of American States, OAS), and such was his interest in this artist that he wrote the article that was published alongside the one written by Cepeda Samudio.
In his article, “Noé León: Francotirador en el mundo del arte” [Noé León: A Sniper in the Art World] the critic Gómez Sicre explains how he discovered the painter, who copied postcards and magazine illustrations and sold his paintings on the streets in the port of Barranquilla. “When I saw him walking around carrying paintings I assumed he was a genuine primitive artist, so I called him over and thus was born a new Latin American painter: Noé León.” When Gómez Sicre asked him to produce paintings of his own creation, León painted Casa y jardín en Barranquilla [House and Garden in Barranquilla] and El Gran Luruaco [The Great Luruaco]. Thanks to the critic’s efforts, the first of these works was shown at the exhibition El Museo de la pintura ingenua [The Museum of Naïve Painting] (1961) at the Baden Museum in Germany, as well as in two other German cities and in the United States.
In his early period Noé León painted still lifes with tropical fruit. Then he began to paint scenes from his rural and urban surroundings along the Atlantic coast of Colombia. His family was extremely poor and he only got as far as the fourth grade in elementary school. He had many jobs in his youth, as mentioned in the article. In order to survive when he moved to Barranquilla he started painting landscapes on old acetate records, then on pieces of cardboard and wood, selling his work in bars and door-to-door. At this point fate intervened and he met Gómez Sicre.
At Gómez Sicre’s suggestion, Eduardo Vilá Fuenmayor organized an exhibition at his Bar La Cueva (a very well-known place that gained national fame as the bar where the Grupo de Barranquilla would gather to talk over a few glasses of rum), and he later became León’s patron. It should be noted that other members of the Grupo de Barranquilla—including the painter Alejandro Obregón (1920−1992)—advised León and helped him to develop his work.
Cepeda Samudio was a member of the Grupo de Barranquilla, a clique of noted writers and artists. He was an innovator in the field of Colombian letters, as can be seen in the story “Todos estábamos a la espera” [We Are All Waiting] (1954) and the novel La casa grande [The Big House] (1962). A celebrated journalist, he wrote Brújula [Compass], a column about culture, for the El Heraldo newspaper. He was involved as a scriptwriter, actor, and producer in the experimental short film La langosta azul [The Blue Lobster] (1954).
