Beatriz González

One of The New York Times Best Art Books of 2019

Explore the full range of the pioneering work of Colombian artist Beatriz González.

At 80, Beatriz González is not only an internationally celebrated Colombian artist, but also a representative of the "radical women" generation from Latin America. Her work spans over six decades and her groundbreaking art has distinct figuration, involving the flattening of forms and use of strong and eccentric color palettes evocative of commercial advertising. Her work often has imagery associated with Western art history as well as mass media common to Colombia in order to shed light on the middleclass notions of taste, class, gender, and ethnicity. This book includes essays that explore González's early work, her late and current work, and her use of photography and archival images. It contextualizes her practice within Colombian history and major events that influenced her work. Filled with illustrations, this book shows the breadth of Beatriz González's oeuvre, which comments on domestic environments and vernacular traditions of her country with self-conscious irony.

Published with the Pérez Art Museum Miami"Too rarely exhibited in North America, the esteemed Colombian painter Beatriz González, now in her 80s, is the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, for which this book is the catalog. In what might be called a noir-Pop style, the artist combines sensationalist images from Colombian tabloids (crimes, assassinations) with outtakes from Western art to chronicle a country gripped by continuous civil strife — La Violencia — since the 1940s. The resulting paintings are, almost impossibly, both grief-laden and witty." —Holland Cotter, The New York TimesTOBIAS OSTRANDER is Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs at Pérez Art Museum Miami.