Ramírez Villamizar, Eduardo (1923–2004)

Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar (b. 1923, d. 2004), Colombian sculptor. Ramírez studied architecture and fine art at the National University in Bogotá. Upon graduation in 1945, he began his career as a painter. His later work amalgamated architecture, painting, and sculpture. From 1949 to 1952 and 1954 to 1956, he lived in Paris. While there, he abandoned expressionism and began to create paintings, murals, and sculptures based on the abstract geometric principles of constructivism. His later forms, however, are increasingly inspired by the pre-Columbian art of Mexico and Peru.

In 1956 Ramírez had his first one-man show at the Pan-American Union, and the Museum of Modern Art purchased his painting Blanco y Negro. In 1971 he participated in the International Sculpture Symposium at the University of Vermont, where he showed his first monumental sculptures (Cuatro Torres). When the Kennedy Center opened in 1973, Colombia presented as its gift Ramírez's De Colombia a John Kennedy.

In 1990 the Colombian government established the Ramírez Villamizar Museum of Modern Art in Pamplona, his birthplace.

See alsoArt: The Twentieth Century .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar—Exposición retrospectiva 1958–1972, text by Ida Ely Rubin (Bogotá, 1972).

Germán Rubiano Caballero, Escultura colombiana del siglo XX (1983); Ramírez Villamizar, text by Frederico Morais (Bogotá, 1984); Ramírez Villamizar: Obra reciente (1987); Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar—Homenaje a los artífices pre-colombinos (Caracas, 1993).

Additional Bibliography

Herzog, Hans-Michael, and Nadin Ospina. Cantos cuentos colombianos arte colombiano contemporáneo = Contemporary Colombian Art. Zürich, Switzerland: Daros-Latinamerica, 2004.

Mutis Durán, Santiago, and Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar. Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar la belleza del pensamiento. Colombia: Ediciones Jaime Vargas, 2000.

                                        Ida Ely Rubin