Beatriz González: First Large-Scale US Retrospective at Pérez Art Museum Miami

The Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) presents the first large-scale American retrospective of Colombian artist Beatriz González (b. 1938, Bogotá), one of the few living artists from the 'radical women' generation of Latin America. The exhibition brings together 150 works spanning six decades, including rarely seen pieces from Colombia. González, often associated with Pop art, rejected the label, calling her flat, brightly colored figures 'underdeveloped paintings for underdeveloped countries.' Her work interrogates Colombia's sociopolitical climate, the global obsession with European art, and the subordinate relationship between peripheral locales like Colombia and Euro-American cultural centers. The show features two-dimensional oil paintings, drawings, silkscreen prints, and pioneering works on furniture and everyday objects (beds, tables, TVs, cigar boxes) that ironically combine low-cost materials with sacred figures or classic European masterpieces. After the 1985 M-19 guerrilla attack on the Palace of Justice left 94 dead, González's palette darkened and her work shifted to themes of death and drug trafficking, incorporating collage and complex compositions. The retrospective runs through September 1, 2019 at PAMM, 1103 Biscayne Blvd, Miami.