Beatríz González. Comedy and tragedy. Retrospective 1948-2010.

These axes, rigorously chronological, determine: her Beginnings (1948-1965), her concern for representation in The discovery of the photographic camera (1965-1978), her reflection about the idiosyncrasy of the Colombian society in Taste (1967-1985) and her position concerning our social conflict in From Turbay( politics and conflict) (1978 onward); curated by Alberto Sierra and Julián Posada.
In the opinion of these curators, three interests are perceived in González: history, research and the popular nature of the image, which have traversed this artist’s career, taking into account that she is a specialist in 19th century Colombian art and that she was curator of the National Museum of Colombia, the place devoted to preserving the historical memory of our country. But if we take a distance from her curatorial work, González’ main interest has been the temperament of the image, around which she has developed a particular artistic language, turning her painting into an intricate universe in which color and form manifest a position in the face of certain circumstances.
Within the 185 pieces that comprise the exhibition, we find the iconographic Los suicidas del Sisga (The suicides of Sirga) (1965), considered the first piece in which “an artist […] utilizes photography as a work tool”, according to historian Carmen María Jaramillo; this work, in addition to marking the beginning of maturity in her production, mediatizes a press clipping, which illustrates, through painting, the tragedy of a couple that decides to commit suicide because of the social condemnation imposed upon it by the social stratum itself; its formal development in large, contrasted color planes, inform about the lack of focus of the source and the precarious quality with which the images of the red media inform society about the everyday events that inhabit their pages.
Paintings that undoubtedly ridicule a society disproportionate in all proportions and senses, as stated by González in 1974; a disproportion that permeates all the layers of society, as perceived by the artist when representing ex president Julio César Turbay around the year 1980 and showing with sarcasm, but always with ethics, the frequent presence of this person in social activities while a country falls in the hands of the newly appeared phenomenon of drug dealing. The following three decades in this artist’s production will concentrate on mediatizing generalized violence in Colombia: the seizing of the Palace of Justice in 1985, the anonymous dead, product of the fight for territorial ownership or of paramilitary activities, illustrate this. And in the midst of this panorama, going back to the artist’s words, nothing is left but to die, period.