malan women. Luis Diaz was another experimenter, showing great talent in his handling of figurative, Neogeometric, and Conceptual compositions. Victor Vaskestler (Guatemalan, b. 1927) preceded the others in showing an interest in self-sufficient Neogeometric work, to take the place of traditional figurative compositions. In Colombia, too, the Neogeometric tendency constituted an exception, but in the late '50s and during the '60s it was cultivated by such strong personalities as to represent a viable alternative to the figurative efforts of the majority. In 1953 the sculptor Edgard Negret (b. 1920) presented a group of "Thirteen Recent Sculptures," which, despite their figurative associations, already evidenced the talent for simplification and confidence in the use of sheet metal that were thereafter to constitute the basis of his art. At the Modern Art Salon sponsored by the Bank of the Republic in 1957, Eduardo Ramirez Villamizar (b. 1923) exhibited solemn, impeccably executed works characterized by a precise balance between color planes and inner variations in form. At the same salon Negret presented a project for a public sculpture, Column in Commemoration of the Massacre, in which for the first time he evidenced interest in work for the urban setting. Compositions by both artists were later set up in public in Bogota. There was only one forerunner of Neogeometric painting in Colombia: Marco Ospina (1912-1983). Only in the generation born around 1930, represented by Omar Rayo (b. 1928), David Manzur (b. 1929), and Carlos Rojas (b. 1933), does one again find a taste for combinations and syntheses of sharply defined forms. Rayo took optical experimentation as his province and has contin-
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DECADES OF CHANGE • 113 •
• EDUARDO RAMIREZ VILLAMIZAR. MECHANICAL COMPOSITION. 1957, OIL ON CANVAS, 100 X 200 CM. COLLECTION OF THE ART MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAS, OAS, WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A. PURCHASE FUND, 1959.
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HURTADO.
BY ANGEL