Beatriz González
“Art says things that history cannot,” Beatriz González noted in a 2019 interview. González, born 1932, is recognized internationally for paintings and sculptures that appropriate images from Western art history and popular culture, especially images circulating in newspapers and magazines in her native Colombia. The artist grew up during the ten-year period known as La Violencia (1948–58) in Colombia, and the country has continued to experience waves of social and political turbulence.
Beginning in the 1960s, González created interventions into the history of painting. In the 1970s, she developed her practice by painting popular imagery onto inexpensive furniture. Through her distinctive saturated palette, color blocking, and interest in the way images circulate in the Global South, she developed a strong reputation as engaged in broader conversations around Pop Art and as a foremost Latin American artist. Throughout her work, images of the body and human gesture were a focus, as was source material related to violence from the Colombian press.
Painter, art historian, and critic Beatriz González was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia, in 1932. She received an MA in fine arts from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and printmaking at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Her first solo show took place in 1964, at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, where she exhibited her “Lacemaker” series based on Johannes Vermeer’s painting. Since then, González has been recognized with many monographic exhibitions, including _Beatriz González — War and Peace: A Poetics of Gesture_, which opened at Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Mexico (2023), and _Beatriz González: A Retrospective_, which opened at Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida (2019). Her work has been featured in many international exhibitions, including _Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985_, presented by the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California (2017). Her work is held in many collections internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; and Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom. González passed away in 2026.
