Beatriz González

Artistic Profile

Primary Themes

• Political violence and its visual representation in mass media
• Colombian national identity and social stratification
• Collective mourning, grief, and commemoration of conflict victims
• Kitsch and popular taste as cultural critique and postcolonial commentary
• Appropriation and re-signification of canonical European art in Third World contexts
• The role of images in mediating and constructing political reality
• Power, spectacle, and media representation of authority (politicians, popes, celebrities)

Techniques Mediums

Painting

Oils and acrylics on canvas — dominant medium throughout career

Sculpture

~3 recorded sculpture lots on Artnet; assemblage works combining furniture and painted surfaces

Installation

Large-scale public installations — most famous: Auras Anónimas (2009), Central Cemetery, Bogotá

Curtain Works

Large-scale acrylic on fabric/curtain supports — Telón de boca para un almuerzo (1975) shown at Venice Biennale 1978

Enamel on Metal

Enamel on metal sheet (e.g., Mutis por el foro, 1973) — deliberately industrial quality

Prints Multiples

Linocuts, serigraphs/screenprints — used for large-scale wallpaper and multiple editions; ~10 recorded print lots

Furniture Assemblage

Painted imagery transferred onto mass-produced furniture (beds, nightstands, bookshelves) — signature practice from 1970s; conceptually loaded objects

Drawing Works on Paper

Ink drawings especially early career (tabloid-source crime imagery); ~4 recorded works on paper lots

Stylistic Evolution

Phase 1 1960s

Traditional painting → canonical appropriation — Vermeer/Velázquez reimagined through Colombian provincial color and deliberate 'bad quality' sensibility. First articulation of the kitsch critique.

Phase 3 Post 1985

Dramatic shift to collective mourning imagery — darker and more austere palette, newspaper photographs of massacres and victims, death and displacement as primary subject. Critics cite this as González's deepest and most significant contribution to art history.

Phase 4 2000s to 2020s

Large-scale public installations (Auras Anónimas), continued refinement of mourning/displacement imagery; growing international engagement without compromise to her distinctive visual language; the Paisajes elementales late series continues until the end of active practice.

Phase 2 1970s to Mid 1980s

Full development of kitsch strategy — furniture paintings, tabloid appropriation, political satire; enamel on metal; large-scale prints and curtain works. Señor presidente series in this mode.

Style Visual Language

Overview

González developed a distinctive graphic style characterized by bold, flat areas of saturated color, simplified and deliberately 'crude' figuration, and large-scale formats. Her palette — vivid yellows, greens, electric blues — consciously references Colombian provincial life (shop windows, sunsets) rather than international art world conventions. She described these colors as 'deliberately out of tune.' The apparent crudeness is strategic — what she called 'bad quality' is a sophisticated critical position.

Key Characteristics

• Bold, flat color fields — graphic rather than painterly in traditional sense
• Deliberate 'bad quality' / simplified figuration — provincialism as intellectual strategy
• Large scale — many works designed for architectural or monumental presence
• Appropriation of mass-media imagery — newspapers, tabloids, magazines, postcards as source
• Reworking of canonical Western art (Vermeer, Manet, Velázquez) through Colombian provincial lens
• Painted imagery transferred onto mass-produced furniture and everyday objects (beds, nightstands, shelves)
• Late-career shift to austere, darker palette emphasizing grief and mourning
• Public installations incorporating industrial materials (iron banisters, metal sheets, enamel on metal)

Movements Associations

Latin American Pop Art (associated but self-differentiated)Conceptual art in Colombian/Latin American traditionArte político (politically engaged art)Post-colonial art practiceArte povera-adjacent material strategies (use of industrial/vernacular supports)

Key Series Bodies of Work

Title	Year	Description
Encajeras (Lacemakers)	1964	First solo series; appropriation of Vermeer's Lacemaker through Colombian visual sensibility. Established the core method of canonical European appropriation.
Los suicidas del Sisga (The Sisga Suicides)	1965	Colorful reinterpretation of black-and-white newspaper photograph of couple who drowned at the Sisga Dam. Breakthrough work — won national prize. Paradigmatic example of 'bad quality' as critical strategy. Collected by Museo Nacional de Colombia.
Vermeeriana	1960s	Series re-imagining Vermeer works through Colombian kitsch lens. Vermeeriana I is among the most auction-recorded works in this series ($138,600 at Christie's 2022). Establishes the canonical/provincial dialectic that drives her early career.
Furniture paintings	1970s–1980s	Painted images of popes, politicians, and celebrities transferred onto mass-produced furniture. Pope's face on nightstands references Colombian devotional household objects. Decoración de interiores (1981) in this vein — monumental scale linocut on canvas at 235 x 339 cm.
Press/tabloid imagery series	1978 onwards	Systematic use of Colombian press photographs (El Tiempo, Vanguardia Liberal) as primary source. Marks shift from Old Master appropriation to direct engagement with Colombia's contemporary political violence.
Telón de boca para un almuerzo	1975	Large-scale acrylic painted on curtain — found in Bogotá shop window, inspired by degraded Manet magazine reproduction. Exhibited at Venice Biennale 1978. Exemplary work of postcolonial image theory.
Auras Anónimas (Anonymous Auras)	2009	Most iconic public installation: 8,977 silhouettes of shrouded figures painted onto iron banisters of Central Cemetery, Bogotá. Direct response to displacement and mass casualties of Colombian armed conflict. Redefines the scope of González's practice into monumental public commemoration.
Paisajes elementales (Elemental Landscapes)	2017–2019	Late-career series including Fuego en la Sierra and Tierra en Barranca — continued engagement with Colombian landscape, conflict, and displacement through monumental formats. Desplazamiento anverso y reverso (2017) is the confirmed $127,000 Christie's lot.