Alfonso Mateus

Thanks to painter Fanny Sanín, who has been living in New York for many years, we recently learned of the death in Germany of Colombian artist Alfonso Mateus (Bogota, 1927), one of Colombia's most important abstract painters and engravers. It should be remembered that during the 1960s, non-figurative production was consolidated in Colombia and represented by creators like Omar Rayo, David Manzur, María Teresa Negreiros, Pablo Solano, Norman Mejía, Manuel Hernández, Carlos Rojas, Antonio Grass and Samuel Montealegre, not to mention Feliza Bursztyn and Bernardo Salcedo, whose artistic careers began in the early 1960s. Alfonso Mateus studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he earned a master's degree in painting, and at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste München in Germany, under professor Franz Nagel, who taught him religious art, stained glass, muralism, mosaic, and graphic arts—engraving and lithography. In 1960, Mateus worked as assistant to professor Nagel and participated alongside him in the creation of a few murals for churches and stained glass projects. In 1961, he served as chancellor at the Colombian consulate in Munich. That same year, he began to exhibit his artistic work in Germany and Colombia. In November of 1961, he presented a solo show at the Biblioteca Nacional de Bogotá. Later on, he participated in the exhibition titled "3,000 Years of Colombian Art" that travelled to several cities around the world, as well as in the exhibition titled "Twenty-Three Colombian Painters" organized in Bogota. In January of 1961, Mateus had a show at the Munich Association of Painters. The same year, he exhibited at the New Group of Munich at the Haus der Kunst. There, he also exhibited in 1962, 1965, and 1966. In 1967, Mateus returned to Colombia and began teaching engraving, drawing and stained glass at the Universidad Nacional de Bogotá. He exhibited his work at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango and at the Museo de Arte de la Nacional. Professor Marta Rodríguez, curator of that exhibition, wrote: "Alfonso Mateus lived in Germany for a long time. Once back in Colombia, he became an important proponent of graphic art as professor at the Visual Arts Department of the Universidad Nacional, which he directed in the 1980s. The collection of the Museo de Arte Nacional has two engravings on metal and one charcoal drawing created in a markedly abstract style that showcase and special interest in the mastery of tonalities and technique. The catalog is illustrated with three works: two etchings from 1972 and a charcoal drawing from 1980. Although each is very different from the others, they all reveal a process of abstract forms based on highly defined organic planes set in contrast to other planes with linear or flat elements rendered with surface-building traces in which consecutive lines are visible. The work by Alfonso Mateus includes paintings (with colorful palettes and non-figurative compositions reminiscent of the early abstract works by Kandinsky created during the second decade of the twentieth century), engravings and drawings (most of these created with charcoal). Save for a few figurative works, most of Mateus's production is abstract and the expressionism that they achieve with stains and graphic elements is not totally uncontrolled. There is always a sense of order and composition in his best works.