Santiago Cárdenas
Bio
Santiago Cárdenas was born in Bogotá in 1937. He pursued his art studies at the Rhode Island School of Design, earning a BFA in painting in 1960. After completing military service in the United States Army, he went on to attend Yale University, where he obtained an MFA in painting in 1964. He returned to Colombia in 1965 and has since had an active career.
His works can be found in the collections of various institutions, including the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museo de Arte Moderno de la Tertulia in Cali, the Museo de Arte de la Universidad Nacional de Bogotá, The Chase Manhattan Bank Collection in New York, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber in Caracas, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Rio de Janeiro, the Prints Museum in Norway, and the collection of BP Belgium in Antwerp, among others.
His work has been recognized in various competitions in Colombia, South America, Europe, and the United States. He has held over forty solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group shows, including the International Biennial of Medellín in 1973 (First Prize in Painting), the São Paulo Biennial in 1977 (Special Mention), Recent Acquisitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1977, The Latin American Presence, 1920-1970 at the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York in 1988, and Art in Latin America at The Hayward Gallery in London in 1989.
Statement
Santiago Cárdenas' work holds a unique place in Latin American art. Cárdenas witnessed one of the decisive cultural moments in recent art history when the enthusiasm for abstract creation came close to being a defining feature of an empowered North America. Despite his fascination with these phenomena and the influence they had on his visual development, he maintained doubts and distance. With this background, in 1965, he returned to a Colombia that was unfamiliar to him, quickly reintegrating himself and dedicating himself to figurative painting without the burden of criticism.
Cárdenas not only sought to express himself through representational forms but also understood that these forms could serve as a platform for complex abstract expression. In the steps he took to achieve this synthesis, he initially produced images that were seen as a proposition of Pop art. Starting from 1970, Cárdenas' masterful work in drawing and painting, combined with his rigorous knowledge of avant-garde art, began to yield original results in which it was impossible to separate the abstract from the figurative. The first series that exemplifies this is "Pizarras" or "Tableros," in which the influence of color field, various strands of abstraction, surrealism, action painting, lyrical expressionism, conceptualism, and, of course, Pop art is clearly evident.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
