Villegas Editores¿ book on Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo, sponsored by Seguros Bolívar, was long overdue and badly needed. Undoubtedly, this Antioquia painter is the most important artist of his generation, despite his relatively brief life (December 30, 1910 ¿ July 11, 1970) and despite some late works ¿especially is abstract paintings and his series of clowns¿ that are surprisingly disappointing and uninspired. Gómez Jaramillo painted, in oil, some of the most solid and ¿modern¿ portraits, landscapes, and female nudes of the 1930s and 1940s. He taught for many years at the Universidad Nacional¿s Fine Arts department ¿he taught fresco painting¿ and wrote accurately about art history issues and about some of his favorite artists. The text in the book was written by Juan Gustavo Cobo, a great admirer of art who has produced many works on the topic and monographs on Roda, Obregón, Juan Cárdenas and Sofía Urrutia. The timeline and bibliography were prepared by Miguel Escobar Calle, who conducted careful research and contributed insightful comments on some of the events highlighted. Next to these texts the book includes very good photographs of the artist, his study, his family, and some national and international characters, among them Mexican pa9inters Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, friends of Gómez Jaramillo. The book¿s illustrations, mainly photographs by Oscar Monsalve, offer good informaton about Gómez Jaramillo¿s work. At a glance we can find outstanding paintings and drawings, among them Autorretrato, oil, 1930; Dama vestida de blanco, oil, 1937; La bien plantada, oil, 1945; Invitación a la danza, fresco 1937; Estatuas, oil, 1937; Gilberto Owen, oil, 1946; Playa portuguesa, oil, 1931; Vista de Toledo, oil, 1930; San Sebastián, oil, 1950; Autorretrato, oil, 1938; Hermanos de Greiff, oil, 1940; Poeta proletario, oil, undated; Margot, oil, 1938; Cartagena, oil, 1944; Chicoral, oil, 1942; Rio Cañas, oil, 1952; La madre del artista, oil, 1939; Hernando Villa, oil, 1941; Tomás Carrasquilla, oil, 1934; Jorge Zalamea y su hijo, oil, 1949; Bodegón con disco, oil, 1931; Bodegón, oil, undated; Gran naturaleza muerta, oil, 1944; Desnudo, oil, 1940; Espalda, oil, 1940; Figuras en el trópico, oil, 1940; and all the drawings of nudes and other works associated to his murals, among them Antioquia la grande, fresco, 1966, at the Banco de Bogotá in Medellin. Juan Gustavo Cobo¿s clear and well-pondered text is a good complement to the images. Supported by a large bibliography, the writer presents a clear profile of Gómez Jaramillo and his place in Colombian art of the first half of the Twentieth Century, offering sharp analyses, in a neat, jargon-free prose, of some of the Antioquian master¿s best paintings. Of La madre del artista, first prize in painting at the First Annual Salon of Colombian Artists, in 1940, he writes: ¿¿the painting shows the mother as a solid, knobby figure, with the formal sobriety that the times demanded of all women, circumscribed t the orbit of her home. Sewing and reading: between these two poles of domesticity she lived her existence, as industrious as it is frugal. The book is Los Pueblos, by Azorín, a 1905 volume where the author attempts to capture the silent mood of those poor and defeated Castilian villages¿ In vain we will look for earrings in her ears or rings in her fingers. She is just a block of firm permanence amidst the undulations of cloth that binds and frames. She is the axis around which the world rotates. Only her eyes, lack and expressive, point towards a meditative interior. They humanize, with a spark of life, this portrait of old mores.. This is not a spiritualizing classicism but a dry realism that binds her to the Earth. An Antioquia matron, expert in managing her household, in morality and in keeping track of expenses¿ The painter portrays her with sharp exactitude and sober affection. There are no overflows of sentiment. Despite their human closeness, the painter focuses on a plastic motif¿...