When a posthumous biography of Santiago Martínez Delgado was published, Álvaro Orduz León, whose field was advertising, wrote this article describing the artist’s training and activities in the fields of art and advertising in Colombia. He tells the story of the artist’s beginnings as a student at the Academy of Fine Arts of Chicago, where he reinforced his taste for “Baroque aesthetics.” The writer states that from that time on, he looked the part of “the artist who rejects anything cheap, economical, or inadequate,” preferring to portray full tunics, dynamic nudes and the “the tides that pass through the muscles of the human figure.” Orduz then clarifies that Martínez Delgado was neither a publicist nor a painter, but “an artist, in particular, a decorator” showing that he was “an illustrator on both the largest and the smallest scales.” This statement is supported by references to the illustrations rendered by Martínez Delgado for the poem Anarkos, written by the poet Guillermo Valencia, and the murals for both the Teatro El Cid and the Elliptical Hall in the National Capitol. Regarding the murals, the writer pays special attention to the artist’s rigorous preparation of the walls, pointing out that, in his opinion, they provide the greatest chromatic richness to be seen in any Colombian mural. In the context of Colombia, Orduz would thus rank them ahead of the murals rendered in dark tones by Pedro Nel Gómez and Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo. In addition, Martínez Delgado made forays into the creation of furniture and lamps, and even created works on board, works of pyrography and mirrors. The writer goes on to tell us that the artist also made a film (a documentary on the life of Simón Bolívar). In yet another arena, radio, Martínez Delgado wrote radio dramas including “El derecho de nacer”—an adaptation of a text by the Cuban writer, Félix B. Caignet—and another about the viceroy José Solís Folch de Cardona, governor of the Nuevo Reino de Granada in the eighteenth century.

The purpose of this article, written 20 years after the death of the Colombian artist Santiago Martínez Delgado (1906–54), was to remember the work of an artist who executed highly acclaimed murals in the 1940s and 1950s. He is an artist about whom little is known and little research has been done, apart from the biography to which the writer of this article refers, written by the historian Joaquín Piñeros Corpas (1915−82). This edition of the biography was sponsored by the Compañía Colombiana de Seguros. In 1935, this company had established the journal Vida, a periodical cultural publication for which Martínez Delgado was the art director, draftsman, designer and editor. 

The artist’s murals, pointed out by Orduz in his article as having the richest chromatic range of any murals in Colombia, are represented in the commissions awarded to him by private corporations, the government and the Church. Examples are the Triptych about the Congress of Cúcuta of 1821 for the Elliptical Hall in the National Capitol [see “Arte: El Mural del Capitolio,” doc. no. 1134910], the frescoes at the Banco Comercial Antioqueño in Medellín, the murals at the Colegio de la Presentación in Bogotá, and the oil paintings executed for the stations of the cross in the Catedral de Cúcuta (unfinished work). The artist’s oil painting Vegetación Colombiana was rendered under commission to the First National City Bank and donated to the Ministry of the Interior and Justice in 2004. This painting was considered the largest work on canvas in Colombia (8m wide x 4m high). Moreover, the article goes on to highlight the artists multiple talents, referring to his decorative work as well as his cinematography and his work in radio. Orduz also mentions his advertising venture, in which he established his own company, the Empresa de Publicidad Santiago Martínez Delgado y Cia. Ltda. However, the writer believes that he cannot truly be called an “advertising executive” since the company he called upon to sponsor his best-known script for radio drama, El derecho de nacer, saw no increase in sales as a result of its sponsorship.

Although he died suddenly when he was not yet 50, Martínez Delgado had already received various medals. They included the gold medal for the oil painting El que volvió—in which he illustrated the problem of internal migration of peasants into the city—at the Salón Anual de Artistas Colombianos in 1940. He also won first prize in painting at the next round of the same competition, the following year, with the oil painting Interludio. Earlier, he had already received the Logan Prize for the mural La evolución cultural de Colombia in 1933, executed for the Chicago Expo that took place the same year. Although much of his work features themes taken from Colombian history, literature and landscapes, it has not been the subject of much research. This omission or oblivion can perhaps be attributed to his premature death, added to the fact that his work was maturing just when Modern art was beginning to emerge in Colombia. These Modern approaches were far from the artist’s “Baroque aesthetics,” mentioned by Orduz. Furthermore, at that time, Colombian art critics were adopting a Modernist view of art history [see “Una mirada a los orígenes del campo de la crítica de arte en Colombia,” doc. no. 1094156]. All these factors at least partially explain the unawareness of the work of Santiago Martínez Delgado that prevails today.