Jaime Franco, who graduated with degrees in Engineering and Computer Science, went to Paris where he gradually started producing sculpture. His study of different types of surfaces later influenced his paintings that included juxtapositions of layers containing complex artistic data: planes, tones, brush strokes, and drawings. The result, as described by Dr. Charles Riley II, has an almost archeological quality due to the layers of information the paintings contain. The reviewer starts his analysis of Franco’s use of color by tracing his experiments back to the greys used in French Impressionism. He then refers to the relationships between Franco’s colors and the chromatic choices of important modern artists such as Henri Matisse in his works The Open Window and Collioure. He goes on from there to mention painters in the modernist tradition, the Abstract Expressionists Franz Kline and Mark Tobey, and to reflect on Franco’s work in terms of observation and analysis of important works of the period. His experiments with monochrome painting—influenced by his observation of Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns—gave him the experience he needed to paint with colors. Applying a technique that includes using rags and his own hand in addition to traditional resources, Jaime Franco has been consistent in the creation of his canvases, combining very thick layers of pigment with very fine ones that affirm the complexity of this Colombian artist’s paintings.    

In 1994 the Yoshii Gallery commissioned the North American professor Charles A. Riley II to write the introduction to the catalogue for the one-man show of works by Jaime Franco (b. 1963), in New York. “At first glance, Franco’s grey boards make him look like the antithesis of a colorist, but in fact he is a master of color,” said Riley after seeing the Colombian artist’s work for the first time. He then developed a broader perspective after meeting the artist and interviewing him (http://www.jaimefranco.net/texts/articulo7a.html). 

The catalogue essay was a forerunner to the chapter that Charles Riley wrote about Jaime Franco in his book Color Codes: Modern Theories of Color in Philosophy, Painting and Architecture, Literature, Music and Psychology which is an expanded version of his earlier essays. What is interesting about the text is that it places Franco within the modern tradition of painting, and universalizes his work by associating it directly with the history of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century North American and European art.  

According to Riley, however, Franco’s experimental work with the range of greys places him in a chromatic tradition that can trace its roots back to Impressionism. Riley also notes Franco’s removal of black paint to reveal the colored pigment underneath, a technique he attributes to Henri Matisse (1869–1954) in his painting The Open Window (1905). Riley goes on to name the pictorial poets of grey that were part of the Abstract Expressionist generation, such as Franz Kline, Mark Tobey, and Willem de Kooning, to underscore the visual richness of Franco’s work, in spite of the fact that physics has insisted on defining grey as the very antithesis of color.  

Later, Riley mentions Cy Twombly and, in particular Jasper Johns whose Grey Rectangle (1957) demonstrated how wrong it is to think of grey as inanimate. Franco’s surfaces—those created with shades of grey and those that were produced later on in color—are all indicative of a complex form of painting.