20 Years Exhibition is nothing

The MAT celebrates its 20 years with an exhibition by maestro Botero

Since 2003, a dream in the hearts of the city's artists and cultural managers has come true. On December 19, the Tolima Art Museum was inaugurated.

Dec 12, 2023

This Tuesday, December 12 at 7:30 p.m. The doors of the MAT open to celebrate its 20 years of foundation, and it does so with two extraordinary exhibitions: Botero and his time in Colombian Art and That 20 years is nothing. Samples carried out with the support of the Government of Tolima and the Departmental Culture Directorate.

Botero and his time in Colombian Art. On September 15, maestro Fernando Botero, the Colombian artist with the greatest recognition in our history, died in Monte Carlo. His life was a career full of outstanding successes, both nationally and internationally.

He participated in the Kassel Documenta in 1977, in the Venice Biennale in 1958 and was winner of the National Salon of Colombia and the Guggenheim Prize, among many other notable events. He exhibited in some of the most important museums, galleries and art fairs in the world.

His monumental sculptures were shown in the streets of the major capitals, consolidating an unprecedented exhibition format, being seen by millions of people. His works have reached historical records in major auctions within Latin American art and books have been published in a dozen languages, and can be found in practically all bookstores around the globe.

The donations of great international masters that he made to the Museum of Antioquia and the Bank of the Republic made him the greatest patron of art that there has been in Colombia. During the more than 70 years of that dazzling career, Colombian art consolidated itself as one of the most active and thriving scenes on the continent.

The exhibition “Botero and his time in Colombian Art” is a tribute to the master and a tour of the works of other Colombian artists who during that time achieved a certain transcendence in the international context, such as Doris Salcedo, Beatriz González, Antonio Caro, Darío Morales, Luis Caballero, Leo Matiz, among others.

“That 20 years is nothing”, is a curatorship that briefly recounts the strengthening that the collections safeguarded by the Tolima Art Museum have had during these 20 years of existence, summarized in its three main axes: regional, national and international.

The Museum's collections are a complex and heterogeneous group of works that include everything from pre-Columbian pieces of the Pijao and Quimbaya breed, to video installations made by young creators, to prominent national and international artists, currently totaling around 1,000 works.

Among the regional artists you will find works by Julio Fajardo, Edilberto Calderón, Luis Felipe Cifuentes, Jesús Leguizamo, Arsenio Zambrano, Darío Jiménez, Hernando Osorio and Mario Lafont. At the national level, authors such as Manuel Hernández, Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar, Julián Santana, Fanny Sanín, Jaime López Correa and Juan Cárdenas Arroyo; and internationally Andy Warhol, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Marina Curci, Carlos Cruz Diez, Daniel Arsham and Arthur Tashko, among others.

The Tolima Art Museum invites the general public to celebrate two decades of art and culture!

Let's welcome together the exhibitions: “Botero and his time in Colombian Art” and “That 20 years is nothing”, this Tuesday, December 12 at 7:30 p.m. Museum of Art of Tolima Cra. 7 # 5-93 B/ Belén

Technical sheets of the photographs:

Botero Exhibition and his time in Colombian art

Author: Fernando Botero / Title of work: Dolorosa ("Painful") / Technique: Oil on canvas / Date: 1965 / Dimensions: 114.6 x 109.5 cm

Author: Fernando Botero / Title of work: Still Life with Hot Soup / Technique: Oil on canvas / Oil on canvas / Date: 1968 Dimensions: 136.2 x 150 cm

20 Years Exhibition is nothing

Author: Jesús Leguizamo / Title of work: Detail of: Uncertainty in Eden (Diptych) / Technique: Oil on MDF / Date: 2022 Dimensions: 150 x 70 cm

Author: Carlos Cruz Diez / Title of work: Chromointerference (From the Carlitos 1 series) / Technique: Screen printing on plastic and metal / Date: 2000 Dimensions: 30 x 35 cm