Homenajes MAMM
The Museo de Arte Moderno of Medellin has gained presence as a space for the diffusion, circulation, and formation of a public increasingly more receptive to modern and contemporary art. One of its best received programs is Homenajes MAMM, a yearly recognition of a contemporary Colombian artist's lifetime achievement. For 2012, the museum partnered with Banco de la República on a tribute to Luis Caballero (1943-1995), with the exhibition Deseo y Tormento.
The show will be open to the public between November 15th, 2012 and March 3rd, 2013. It includes 56 works—prints, silk-screens, oils, and drawings—, 36 from the Banco de la República Art Museum and 17 from private Medellin collections.
This important selection encompasses almost three decades in Caballero's career, between the 1960s and 1990s, traversed by a clearly defined connecting thread: the representation of the body, and especially the male nude figure.
Luis Caballero was born in Bogotá and studied at Gimnasio Moderno. Later, he traveled with his family to Spain, where he produced his first paintings at the age of 12. These early paintings are influenced by Velázquez, thanks to the budding artist's frequent visits to the El Prado museum. Relocated to Paris, Caballero studied at the La Grande Chaumière and began a series of figurative works inspired by Francis Bacon. In 1968 he won first prize in the Coltejer Biennial with a monumental work he titled La pequeña capilla sixtina and critics knew as La cámara del amor, now on permanent display in the Museo de Antioquía. After his return to Paris, Caballero's work took a new turn: more stylized, volatile figures than embrace or reject each other while enveloped in an eroticism that alludes to religious themes. In the 1980s, an element of violence was added to the mix in a permanent exploration of the male figure, which was Caballero's main project through the end. Even more than a painter, Caballero was a great draftsman, whose work incorporated classicism, academicism, mannerism, and even elements of abstraction.
