Beatriz González Born 1932 in Bucaramanga, Colombia

Lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia

In means of her paintings, drawings and sculptures Beatriz González picks out the often tragic moments of this troubled era, acting like a contemporary witness. Constant armed conflicts, including a ten-year civil war (1948 - 1958) and then the 52-year armed conflict between the Colombian state and the guerrilla movement led by the FARC (1964 - 2016), have had a lasting impact on her perception of society. A controversial choice of subjects, that in the first two decades of her artistic practice, starting from the early 1960‘s, she approaches through a critical sense of humor and irony. The press is of vital importance to her work, as Beatriz González collects images from scandal sheets and advertisements as substantial source for her thematic remakes. She likes to „start from something that already existed“, as she states: a graphic referent, a print, filtering it through a creative process. The modesty of Mrs González‘s technique tends to mislead the observer, giving her artwork a seemingly light appearance: Vital, bold colors and irrational spaces for very concrete and serious subjects.  Her choice of color and technique are original and very related to the country. It is the burgundy, blue, green, orange and purple – colors of the Colombian countryside, as she experienced them in the architecture of Bucaramanga as a child. 

Since 2016, Beatriz González ties in with a series of subjects around the politically charged figure of collective mourning, which have increasingly found their way into her work over the past twenty years. In the context of different narratives, the figure appears as an abstracted, black silhouette or as an allegory with simplified female features and runs like a connecting thread through the works in the exhibition. Simple outlines and generously applied areas of colour in rich violet, green, earthy red or mustard yellow dominate the composition. What appears at first glance to be an everyday rural scene is a subtle reappraisal of a series of tragic events that have gained increasing attention in the national and global press since the signing of the peace.

In Beatriz González's work, it is an approach towards the truth that silently reminds the viewer to remember. Her motifs undergo a transformation as she reworks press photographs collected from newspapers, translating them into drawings and repeated patterns. Through this process of refinement, they acquire an iconic presence. Her art goes beyond merely appropriating press clippings; it recontextualizes them, offering a lens through which to perceive historical events and collective memory. Her paintings create a pictorial world, that, only on closer inspection, speak of the tragic losses. Each work is like a poetic metaphor for the emptiness left by the missing. As in almost all her series of works, as it were, the artist plays with repetition. While the silhouettes in the individual works are repeated in new combinations each time, their outlines in works are reduced to such an extent that they almost become a geometric pattern, as sort of alphabet. The principle of repetition is intensely heightened in the wallpaper.

Beatriz González has exhibited in many of the world‘s leading museums and her works are encountered in the permanent collections of important institutions in Europe and The Americas. In 2023, the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City curated a solo exhibition that later traveled to the De Pont Museum in Tilburg in 2024. In 2019 the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) have shown a retrospective show. In 2017 the CAPC Bordeaux devoted a comprehensive solo exhibition to the artist. A catalogue was published on this occasion. The show travelled to Reina Sofia, Madrid and to Kunst-Werke, Berlin in 2018. In 2017 her works were presented at Documenta 14. In 2015 her works were shown in the major group exhibition “The World goes Pop” at Tate Modern, London, UK. An extensive interview with Mrs González was published in the volume “Conversations in Colombia” in 2015 by the art historian and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.