_Leo Matiz, Gazing at the Infinite_ at the Museo Nacional de Colombia

The project includes 128 black and white photographs, of which a large percentage are copies made by their creator. The exhibition is complemented with copies of the Reader’s Digest magazine in which the Colombian artist’s contributions appear, a hitherto unpublished album of photographs of fabric designs —perhaps originally a catalogue of samples— of Donelda Fazakas (his wife at the time), created in New York from 1947 to 1948, which can now be enjoyed, thanks to its quality, as an artists’ book and, lastly, the projection of fragments of several of the Mexican films in which Leo Matiz participated.

What this exhibition seeks through this exhibition, organized in five thematic nuclei, is to present a panorama of the fascinatingly rich professional life of this photographic artist, highlighting some of the iconic known works, together with unpublished material presented here for the first time. Its intention by revealing Matiz’ work is also to achieve two objectives: to show photography in a humanistic documentary style and to present modern photography in an experimental light that permeated the artistic avant-garde of the XX Century.

Throughout the 82 years of his life, Leonet Matiz-Espinoza (Aracataca, 1917 - Bogota, 1998) lived his life with intensity: he traveled all around the globe, lived in four countries, worked as a photographer —the work which brought him international renown— as a cartoonist, caricaturist, painter, actor, editor, gallerist, publicist, art dealer, agriculturalist and horse breeder; he met and got to know presidents, politicians and ambassadors and was a friend to creators of the art world as well as to show business celebrities. His main work was as a graphic reporter, but he was also active in commercial, documentary and artistic photography.

Over the course of six decades, he accumulated a large portfolio of more than three hundred thousand images, although his adventurous, nomadic existence resulted in the loss of a part of this production. However, the work that has survived to the present is a valuable legacy which must be preserved, studied and made known, because it shows the imagination of one of the most important photographers of the XX Century, whose work is intrinsically woven into the history of photography in Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela.

Within the framework of the exhibition, a catalogue will be published and the Ministry of Culture will launch the Leo Matiz documentary directed by Diego Samper and produced with the support of the Leo Matiz Foundation. The Leo Matiz, Gazing at the Infinite exhibition was made possible thanks to the sponsorship of Ecopetrol and Banco Itaú BBA, as well as the support of the Association of Friends of the National Museum of Colombia and the National Autonomous Museum of Mexico.

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Museo Nacional de Colombia

Sala de Exposiciones Temporales Gas Natural Fenosa

April 4th – May 19th, 2013