Arango, Débora (1907–2005)

Débora Arango (b. 11 November 1907, d. 5 December 2005), Colombian artist. Born in Medellín, Arango studied with Eladio Vélez in the Medellín Institute of Fine Arts, from 1933 to 1935, first displaying her works in 1937. Her bold and expressive use of color and contrast, often of exaggerated human forms, inspired heated debate over the morality of herself and her work, especially from the Roman Catholic Church in Bogotá. Indeed, Arango's innovative and vibrant oil and watercolor paintings of provocative nudes shocked many sectors of Colombian society in the 1940s.

Arango then turned to social criticism, often from a feminist perspective, focusing upon such themes as prostitutes and popular culture. Her work of the late 1940s and 1950s, which retained its highly political and anticlerical character, much in the style of the caricaturist Ricardo Rendón (1894–1931), placed her in the vanguard of Colombian abstract art. In the 1950s, Arango traveled to England and Paris, where she added ceramics to her repertoire. She became professor at the Institute of Fine Arts in 1959.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Santiago Londoño, "Paganismo, denuncia y sátira en Débora Arango," in Boletín Cultural y Bibliográfico 22, no. 4 (1985): 2-16.

Additional Bibliography

Londono Vélez, Santiago, and Débora Arango Pérez. Débora Arango: Vida de pintora. Bogota: Ministerio de Cultura, República de Colombia, 1997.

Viveros, M., et al. De mujeres, hombres y otras ficciones: Género y sexualidad en América Latina. Bogota, Colombia: T/M Editores, 2006.

                                            David Sowell