iArt Institute of ChicagoGrant Park / Loop
The first exhibition of Colombian artist Beatriz González's works on paper: more than 80 works from six decades, many shown publicly for the first time.
Preview: written before the show opened
In 1965 González saw a newspaper photograph of a couple who had died by suicide, and what held her was the bad printing: the picture had been copied from another paper, and the distortions showed. She painted her own version, The Suicides of Sisga, and the show starts there, with the "deliberately clumsy" style the museum says broke the rules of Colombian fine art.
This is the first retrospective of her drawings and prints: more than 80 works across six decades, with sketches, sketchbooks, objects and archival material, some on public view for the first time. You follow her from reworked art history, crime pages and popular culture to, from the mid-1980s, presidents, generals and the often anonymous victims of political violence and climate disasters. The title borrows the old Spanish promo line for a comic strip turned colour TV series: "now in series and full color!"
Expect hard subjects, including suicide and political violence. It is in Galleries 124 to 127 and included with museum admission.
It starts with a badly printed newspaper photo González copied in 1965, distortions and all. More than 80 drawings and prints follow her from crime pages to presidents and the victims of Colombia's political violence. Expect hard subjects.
The Suicides of Sisga I (1965)
Look for the opening work: a couple's portrait painted from a reprinted newspaper photo, keeping the smudges and distortions that caught González's eye.