Andrés de Santa María
Encyclopedia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
n painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
from Bogotá
Bogotá
Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...
. His work was mostly impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
in nature.
Biography
Santa Maria was born in BogotaBogotá
Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...
on December 16 1860. In his childhood he spent two years in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
In 1882 entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris, where he studied under Fernando Humberto and Enrique Gervex, and worked alongside Ignacio Zuluaga, Santiago Rusiñol
Santiago Rusiñol
Santiago Rusiñol i Prats was a Catalan post-impressionist/Symbolist painter, poet, and playwright.He was born in Barcelona in 1861, and died in Aranjuez in 1931 while painting its famous gardens....
and the Prince Eugene of Sweden. In 1889 he painted the picture of Matías de Francisco for the Bank of Bogota, and in this year also painted Lavadoras del Sena. From 1893 he made many trips back and forth to Europe where he made a notable exhibition in Bogota in 1897 before returning to Europe.
In 1904 however, he was invited by the president of the republic, general Rafael Reyes
Rafael Reyes
Rafael Reyes Prieto was Chief of Staff of the Colombian National Army and President of Colombia .- Biographic data :...
, to perform an exhibition with the writers Sanín Cano, Hinestroza Daza and Max Grillo. Until 1911 he was director of the School of Fine Arts in Bogota. In 1906 he painted the triptych of the National Capital, in this represented Simon Bolivar
Simón Bolívar
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Yeiter, commonly known as Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military and political leader...
directing the liberation campaign. On finishing his work as director of the School of Beautiful Arts, he returned again to Europe and settled in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
.
In 1936, he received much acclaim from his exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts in Brussels . In 1937 he made a retrospective exhibition in the Burlington Gallery in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, displaying 125 paintings made over a 30 year period from 1907.
Style and legacy
Santa Maria's work was in essence, impressionist in character and his work had an impact on modern painting in ColombiaColombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
. Sometimes, this impressionism however would take passage to postimpressionist and other influences. He influenced the work of later artists such as Fídolo Alfonso González Camargo and Roberto Páramo. In Latin America, one can draw parallels of his work with the Venezuelan Armando Reverón
Armando Reverón
Armando Julio Reverón was a modernist painter of the late 19th and early 20th century in Venezuela. Most of his work was inspired by the coast, landscape and people of Macuto, located in the central coast of Venezuela, and was characterized by his view and expression of the bright luminosity of...
and the Uruguayan Pedro Figari
Pedro Figari
Pedro Figari was a Uruguayan painter, lawyer, writer, and politician. Although he did not begin the practice until his later years, he is best known as an early modernist painter who emphasized capturing the every-day aspects of life in his work...
. The greatest collection of his works amounting to some 30 oil paintings is conserved by the National Museum of Colombia in Bogota. The museum owns emblematic pieces such as "En la Playa de Macuto" (Ca. 1907). His other works are in museums such as Colección de Arte del Banco de la República, the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá and the Museo de Antioquia
Museo de Antioquia
The Museo de Antioquia is the most important museum in Medellín, and one of the most known in Colombia. It was the first founded in the Antioquia department. Their collections are located in Medellin downtown, in front of Fernando Botero's square, near the Parque Berrio metro station....
in Medellín
Medellín
Medellín , officially the Municipio de Medellín or Municipality of Medellín, is the second largest city in Colombia. It is in the Aburrá Valley, one of the more northerly of the Andes in South America. It has a population of 2.3 million...
, Antioquia.
He died in 1945.