100 years of Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar

On the occasion of the hundred years of the birth of Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, the Modern Art Museum of Bogota (MAMBO) inaugurated the exhibition Colección en Escena 04: Ramírez antes de Villamizar. The show was curated by Eugenio Viola and Juaniko Moreno with the aim of exhibiting the artist's earliest work. MAMBO’s collection of twenty-two paintings crystallizes a period of pictorial exploration by Ramírez Villamizar, who was beginning to approach abstraction. The title of the exhibition alludes to “his first signature, ‘Ramírez’, which was the way he signed his early paintings from the 1940s and 1950s, before integrating his two surnames as a signature form.” This exhibition is an opportunity to know Ramírez Villamizar’ first period of work distinguished by a pictorial exploration, which differs from the artist's better-known sculpture production characterized by a balanced and geometric abstraction. Likewise, the exhibition contains a photographic archive of Hernán Díaz, a famous Colombian photographer who recorded various moments of the artist, leaving a series of photographs, and correspondence.
On the other hand, the exhibition El archivo Ramírez Villamizar: la vida entre cajas y papeles explores in depth the artist's personal archive, which was donated by Ramírez Villamizar Corporation to the Bank of Digital Art Archives in Colombia (BADAC), an institution belonging to Los Andes University. The exhibition was curated by Ana María Franco, María Juliana Vargas, and Nicolás Bonilla with the objective of establishing dialogues between the artist’s work and his personal archive. The exhibition highlights the sketches and preliminary models of works that Ramírez Villamizar himself saved and preserved ; these objects of the artist's archive establish a relationship with finished works. Likewise, photographs of artworks and exhibitions, correspondence, and press clippings end up configuring an exhibition that allows knowing Ramírez Villamizar through the documents that he collected and kept during his lifetime. The exhibition has a curatorial script that allows the visitor to navigate the most important moments of Ramírez Villamizar's artistic production.
El archivo Ramírez Villamizar: la vida entre cajas y papeles is the result of exhaustive work to collect, preserve and classify the artist's personal archive, which includes more than two thousand documents. This extensive archive donated to the Los Andes University will be published in its entirety on the BADAC digital platform.
Colección en Escena 04: Ramírez antes de Villamizar opened on August 6 at MAMBO, and will be open until September 4, 2022.
El archivo Ramírez Villamizar: la vida entre cajas y papeles inaugurated on August 11 at the Centro Cívico Exhibition Hall, Universidad de Los Andes, Cra 1 No. 19-20. The exhibition will be open until September 29, 2022.