Bogotaso and "Critical Art" 1948 in Colombia: paintings by Enrique Grau and Alejandro Obregona

Cruz Fajardo Yulli Marley Postgraduate student, the department of Western European Art, Saint Petersburg State University 199226, Russia, Sankt-Peterburg, g. Saint Petersburg, ul. Korablestroitelei, 20, of. korp. 3. marley_cruzf@hotmail.com Other publications by this author

In this publication, we analyze a number of works of art reflecting the events of April 9, 1948 in Colombia, when the presidential candidate from the Liberal Party, Jorge Eliezer Gaitan, was assassinated. This event was the impetus for a civil uprising called Bogotaso. The works of Enrique Grau and Alejandro Obreg?n related to the uprising are of a political nature, they are an artistic reaction to the fact that marks the beginning of the period of the guerrilla movement in the country, as well as the moment of the birth of a new tradition of Colombian art – "critical art".

To understand the significance of the events of April 9 in the historical consciousness of the country, we must remember that the peaceful Bogota of the early 1940s underwent radical changes after 1948. The nature of these changes vary from political and architectural to social and aesthetic, and all these changes are intertwined, which makes it necessary to analyze them all together. After Bogotaso , the following memories of Unamuno will go far into the past: "Bogota," those who knew her told me, "the writer claimed, gives the impression of an ancient Spanish city, the peace of which is sung by the bells of monasteries. [...] The population is small, scattered over a vast territory, which is not reached by waves of emigrants flooding other American lands; this population has preserved, perhaps more than any other in Spanish America, the traditions and feelings of a peaceful colony [...]" ^{[1, pp. 13-14]}.

Due to the destruction and looting of the main buildings of the capital, the city center turned into ruins. During the subsequent reconstruction, the architects abandoned the neoclassical and colonial style of the early XIX century and chose modern architecture corresponding to the European trends of the XX century. Plaster and decorations gave way to steel and concrete, stained glass windows replaced balconies and courtyards. Modern technical and technological elements, such as elevators and powerful security systems, began to be introduced.

In the aesthetic aspect, changes are also obvious. Artistic trends in the art of Colombia since the end of the XIX century have been marked by the influence of the School of Fine Arts. This institution was founded in 1886 by the artist, journalist, writer, professor and Colombian soldier Alberto Urdaneta, it focused on academism, which was dominated by such traditional genres as landscape and portrait. In the 1920s and 1930s, the avant-garde gradually began to penetrate Colombia in the person of such significant figures as, for example, Andres Santa Maria, but it was in the 1940s that landscape and portrait began to give way to genres that were more revolutionary, impressive and dramatic, since it was precisely such genres that could reflect the events of that time.

This transitional period in the development of modern painting in Colombia is an important part of the changes that the country underwent in the 1950s, because, as stated by the critic and poet, the founder of the magazine Mito Jorge Gaitan Duran: "On chaotic, desperate paths full of trembling poetry, modern art is trying to find its destiny" ^{[2, pp. 33-35]}. It is after Bogotaso that the art associated with the theme of repression begins to feel the influence of the avant-garde with greater force, and the step from figurative art to abstract art is made much faster.

Before proceeding to the analysis of the iconic works associated with Bogotaso, their aesthetic characteristics and the significance of these works for the history of Colombian art of the XX century, let us turn to a brief overview of the events of April 9, 1948 and the political consequences that these events had in the modern history of the country.

It all started with shouts: "Gaitan was killed!", "Gaitan was killed!". At 13:05 in the center of Bogota, at the door of the building that bears the name of Agustin Nieto, presidential candidate Jorge Eliezer Gaitan, at the moment when he was leaving his office, was the victim of an assassination attempt by Juan Roa Sierra. Public unrest began immediately: civilians with machetes in their hands began a protest action, as a result of which a large number of buildings were destroyed throughout the capital.

Gaitan was transferred to the Central Clinic, and literally a few minutes after that he died. The culprit of the murder was chased, seized, dragged through the streets and lynched by a mob in the Plaza de Narino, and then disfigured thrown on the steps of the National Capitol. The uprising against the government of Mariano Ospina swept the whole country like a fire and the population felt ridiculed and deceived.

The leader of the liberal party Gaitan has gained great popularity among the population due to his speeches against the oligarchy. From 1931 to 1932, as a congressman, he conducted a political investigation into the banana plantation massacre, as the murder of approximately 1,800 workers of the United Fruit Company in Sienaga in the Magdalena Department was called on December 5 and 6, 1928. Later, as mayor of Bogota and Minister of Education, he carried out various reforms that supported the lower classes of society. Among these transformations were measures aimed at improving school canteens, achieving mass literacy, agrarian reform and others. That is why his murder caused such a stir in the liberal Party and such indignation among people who saw in their beloved leader the last hope for political and democratic change.

After the murder of Gaitan, soldiers of the Presidential Guard battalion surrounded the presidential house, and Lieutenant Silvio Carvajal gave the order to shoot at civilians approaching the house. At 3 p.m., Captain Mario Serpa left the tank squad located in the Santa Ana area (now Northern Canton), commanding three battle tanks and six armored cars, and headed for the Plaza de Bolivar. At 4 p.m., the tanks arrived in the city center and "at the entrance to 11th Street, one of the tanks stopped, turned around and started shooting at the crowd" ^[3]. In addition, snipers fired from the top of the building opposite the demonstrators and, thus, dozens of dead and wounded began to appear on the streets of the city.

Since the events, the position of the state and the media has been a policy of demonizing the protesters, while emphasizing the outrages of the angry people ^{[4, p. 41]}, and not the reasons that prompted the population to take to the streets, which consisted in demanding a fair trial for the murder of the liberal leader and the resignation of President Mariano Ospina. Thus, as Enrique Santos rightly states: "The flames of April 9 not only engulfed the trams and architectural gems of the city, but also turned the democratic essence of the country into the ashes of repressions that have lasted for more than half a century" ^[5].

With this "failed revolution", the fuse of war was lit between liberals and conservatives, who had already had strained relations with each other since the middle of the XIX century, but after the described murder, they declared an essentially "undeclared civil war" to each other. This led to an escalation of the conflict, and the period from 1949 to 1957 can be considered one of the most violent in the history of Colombia ^{[6, p. 144]}.

In this context, a number of artists decided to express their position on what is happening and capture the events of Bogotaso in their work. Some of them, as chroniclers, presented in their works the exposure of the brutal methods of suppressing the uprising, others denounced the murder of the leader of the liberals, others focused on demonstrating the power of the destruction that happened in those days. Coincidentally, there were many Latin American artists and intellectuals in the Colombian capital at that time, because several artistic events were planned for these days, such as, for example, the IX Pan-American Conference ^{[7, p. 535]}. and within its framework there is a large inter-American Painting Exhibition.

The two witnesses to the events of Bogotaso were the painters Enrique Grau and Alejando Obreg?n. These are two Caribbean artists born abroad and nationalized in Colombia. They are an important part of the history of contemporary art in Colombia. Obreg?n and Grau were fundamental masters in the process of developing the art of the Caribbean coast and introducing modern aesthetics into the sphere of national art. Their works, like the works of many Caribbean artists, are associated with fantasy, which is strongly influenced by reality, because, as Garcia Marquez states: "Artists had to invent very little, and perhaps their task was the opposite: to make reality plausible" ^{[8, p. 7]}.

The artistic career of the artist Enrique Grau began on the Colombian coast of the Caribbean Sea. The themes of his paintings were related to the human image, the carnival atmosphere and the culture of northern Colombia. The main characters of his works were mulatto women or mestizos of the region. We see this in one of his first works: "The Mulatto" (1940). This painting was awarded an honorable mention at the first Annual Exhibition of Artists of Colombia, held at the National Library of Bogota and, thanks to this, the painter won a scholarship to continue his studies at the Art Students League of New York. This work of the initial stage of the master's creativity already possessed the power of color that characterized the artist's work throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The drawing was distinguished by high professionalism. In his later works, the artist left the thoroughness of the graphic basis. In addition, the very fact of giving the mulatto a certain aura of dignity could be a manifestation of the intention to break with the tradition of creating typical portraits of secular women, so characteristic of the beginning of the XX century. In this work there is a realism close to naturalism.

During his years abroad, Grau experimented with cubism, abstractionism and especially expressionism. In the United States, he was influenced by the work of George Gross, who interested him in acute social criticism of reality and an apocalyptic vision of the future. He was also a student of Harry Sternberg and Morris Kantor, from whom he learned graphic art, thus becoming a pioneer of screen printing in Colombia. All this visual baggage that Grau acquires abroad will be vividly represented in his works created after 1940 and filled with the drama of new images being born.

By 1948, Grau had already returned to Colombia and witnessed an uprising in the Colombian capital. In the same year, a collective exhibition was being prepared, organized by the Leda Gallery, owned by the Rubio Cuervo brothers. This exhibition was supposed to open on the night of April 9, and although, for obvious reasons, the opening of this space turned out to be impossible, the preparation of works for the exhibition allowed many young artists of that time to meet and start collaborating with each other.

Regarding the events of April 9, Maria Cristina Laverde writes the following: "[...] the artist believes that this April 9 was undoubtedly a disaster for Bogota, but that somehow from that day, from the ashes, the city opened up to the world, art, communication, that is, transformed, starting a decisive process of modernization" ^{[9, p. 130]}.

The influence of the events of that day is reflected in the work of Enrique Grau "The burnt tram" (1948) (Fig. 1). The canvas is almost entirely occupied by the sharp outlines of the burning tram car, fragments of the broken front glass are visible around. The image is very similar to some photographs taken that day at the Plaza de Bolivar by photographers such as Manuel Rodriguez or Sadi Gonzalez (Fig. 2). In this work, Grau reflects the very fire of rebellion, the fury of the moment. At this time, the artist sought to break with the dominant academicism in Colombia and join the avant-garde movement, focusing on the need for art to be renewed.

In this work, the drawing is not an abstraction, but rather an allegory. The artist himself called it "pictorial lyrics", he translated the image into a symbolic plane, transformed it into images that stand closer to signs than to recognizable familiar forms. We see how the artist approaches expressionism, using a bright palette and aggressive tones. The contrast between red (Liberal Party) and blue (Conservative Party) is also symbolic for the image. The color shows great density, the drawing loses its importance, which was peculiar to it in the previous works of the master.

The use of curved figures helps the master to convey the emotion of pain, to express the tragedy more vividly, giving the image an inner drama. This stage, where color prevails over other expressive means, is undoubtedly, in our opinion, one of the most interesting in the work of the master. Over time, the color will become less rigid, less expressionistic, if I may say so, its aesthetics will give way to a stage where the drawing will prevail over the color.

Significant changes in transport policy regarding trams in Colombia are related to the event depicted in Grau's painting: the burning of several cars served as an excuse for the government to close the Bogota City Railway Company, and although it continued to operate until 1951, Bogotaso can be considered the beginning of the end of the era of trams and trains in the country. Grau's work is a reminder of the end of this form of mobility in the capital of Colombia. This situation created in the collective memory of the capital's residents an image of the landscape of the city before and after Bogotaso. It was a moment of change that was used to establish a new form of mobility in the city and the country as a whole: the burning of several trams served as a pretext for establishing the era of buses, which continues to this day.

After Bogotaso and the bloodiest years of the period of repression, Enrique Grau went to Mexico in 1954 to study Aztec art, and then in 1956 to Florence, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. If you go through the entire work of the artist, you can see that in thematic and formal terms it was gradually changing, but in his work there were always echoes of the changes that occurred in the year of socio-political shifts in the country. Here are some of the works related to these phenomena: "Dark Night of the Soul" (1972), "Dedication to a political prisoner" (1981), "Head with a Machete", "Fire", "Music of the Alley" and "Dance of the Doodles" (all 2003).

The second artist whose works we will analyze in connection with the events of April 9, 1948, is Alejandro Obreg?n, who by 1944 was already known in the artistic circles of the country: he participated in the Fifth National Salon of Artists of Colombia and in 1944 was highly appreciated by local critics due to his "romantic expressionism". From the very beginning of his career, he used modern techniques to create images close to the traditions of Colombian folk culture. The artist fused abstract forms with figurative ones, his brush was strong and decisive, but his style moved away from avant-garde purism, approaching nature and leaving aside the modern vision of progress, which was fundamental to European modernism.

During Bogotaso, Obreg?n was in the capital, preparing an exhibition at the Colombian Society of Architects and, consequently, witnessed the events that took place a few minutes after Roa shot Gaitan. It was crucial for the artist to become an eyewitness to the repressions with which the government of Mariano Ospina responded to the rage and discontent of the civilian population. From that moment on, his work is purely accusatory in nature and approaches a realistic reflection of the brutal reality of the country.

His painting "The Massacre of April 10" (Fig. 3) is a testament to the events of that day. Today there are no official data on the number of victims, the figure ranges from 500 to 2500 dead ^[10]. Obreg?n's painting addresses the theme of the dead, whom he found in the Central Cemetery the day after the uprising, and has a close connection with the photographs taken by Sadi Gonosales and Luis Alberto Gaitan "Lunga" (Fig. 4). With a notebook in his hand, the artist prepared to act as a chronicler of the history of those days. He described what he saw as follows: "I remember a beautiful woman's face with her brains blown out, with her mouth slightly open, with a big gold tooth in the middle of her mouth. The face is intact, but the top of the skull is blown apart!.. I was very close, drawing it, detail by detail, and suddenly someone's hand touched me and a voice said: "You are defiling my daughter," it was the mother... I left" ^{[11, p. 81]}.

The painting "The Massacre of April 10" was part of an exhibition that the artist held on April 28, 1948 in the building of the Society of Architects, presenting 24 works to the viewer. With this work, the artist showed his rejection of repression on April 9. This work of Obregona gives the impression of incompleteness, which is explained by the fact that the artist intended to make a series of murals, murales, taking the exhibited work as a model. This is clearly not a realistic picture, but, taking into account the historical context in which it was created, it is largely related to the political discourses of that time, in which conservative leaders declared that it was necessary to "chop off liberals' heads" ^[12].

In the picture we see dismembered bodies: heads, arms, legs, clenched fists, female torsos and a naked child with a bleeding wound in the side. The color that prevails in the background is blue (the color of the Conservative Party), and red accompanies the bleeding figures. The colors of the figures "pass" through black, brown and white. This is a picture made up of geometric elements that form a kind of puzzle. The work "The Massacre of April 10" is an exception among the artist's works created in the 1940s, since during this decade his works revolved in the field of monochromatism and abstraction.

The painting consists of pieces of reality and reminds us of Pablo Picasso's Guernica (1937) ^[12], which was also created in a political context of great importance for Europe, because during the Spanish Civil War it condemned the bombing of the Basque city by the Condor Legion and Italian legionary aircraft. Obreg?n was in Spain in 1940 and 1944, where he was significantly influenced by Picasso and Goya. Among the influences, one can note both formal and stylistic, such as, for example, the fragmentation of bodies, and symbolic, such as the concentration of the author of the picture on the topic of the consequences of violent actions, and not on the action itself.

Small bullet wounds in the mutilated bodies are also historical evidence of those who staged the massacre: the rebels were armed with machetes, sticks and knives ^{[13, pp. 330-337]}, state troops ? rifles and pistols. With this detail, Obreg?n reveals who is to blame for the murders presented in his work. And the presence of mostly female and children's bodies in the work is also a reflection of the essence of the conflict.

The theme of repression in the visual arts of the 1940s and 1950s, from a stylistic point of view, fluctuates between figurativeness and abstraction. But modern themes in the field of art (as in many others) had to make their way, overcoming presidential decrees and government censorship. Alejandro Obreg?n's work "The Massacre of April 10" (1948) did not escape these hardships. A few weeks after Bogotaso, censorship of the media became apparent, various decrees restricting freedom of expression were promulgated, and in the following years under the Government of Laureano Gomez (1950-1951) and the dictatorship of Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957), this position of the Government was radicalized.

According to the artist himself: "In 1948 I was painting mass murders: I'm starting to put "awareness" into my painting. The realization that painting can expose, but never solve the problem, because painting does not solve anything... art is a great example of freedom [...], when I exhibited The Massacre, the ministry asked me to remove the painting from the Gallery" ^{[11, p. 81]}. The aforementioned censorship of the painting is understandable, given that Obreg?n accused the Ospina government of repressive actions against the rebellious people.

With this work, an element of criticism begins to manifest itself in the author's work, and although Obreg?n is an artist who has been against violent methods of struggle throughout his career, he has never considered himself an "artist devoted" to any cause or any political grouping. For him, art should exist only for its own sake, without taking the side of any political ideas or ideologies. His painting seeks to convey a sense of reality, but does not pretend to change the course of history. For an artist, according to art critic Marta Truba ^{[14, p. 72]}, painting is not connected with anything but itself. But the painting "The Massacre of April 10" (1948), without being transformed into the concept of "devoted to the idea of art", contains an explicit criticism of repression as such.

In the same spirit, in 1962 he wrote one of the most significant works of art  Colombia under the name "Violence". The artist uses a landscape tradition inherited from the 19th century to create a landscape that reflects the desolation caused by repression in Colombia. The body of a lonely murdered woman, pregnant, naked, with a wound in the chest, was enough for the painter to convey the desolation and horror that the country experienced during the repressions. Obreg?n is considered one of the Colombian artists in whose work the theme of repression has transcendental significance and high artistry, reflecting the deep drama of the war.

Thus, the meaning of Bogotaso in the history of Colombia goes far beyond the murder of Gaitan himself, it is more than a violation of the peace and tranquility of peaceful Bogota, which Unamuno wrote about in 1919. April 9, 1948 was a dam break in a society with deep social stratification, an attempt to destroy the prevailing traditional order. Although 74 years have passed since the assassination of the political leader, he is still remembered today as an important milestone in national history, because, as historian Hebert Brown says: "If Gaitan had remained alive, we would have had a less anarchic civil life. We would not have bled to death in these endless skirmishes in one village after another, year after year."^[15]

The events of April 9 have a great impact on the political, historical, artistic and cultural processes in the country. Firstly, the resulting political split led to a period called "Violence" (1948-1957), one of the bloodiest periods in the history of Colombia, when the stratification of society became even more obvious, and political repression became part of the national reality. But why did the murder of Gaitan become decisive for unleashing these events? Jorge Serpa Eraso writes that this happened "because his [Gaitan's] death intensified the stratification of society and the political persecution of opponents, and also revealed a crisis of the legitimacy of the state" ^[3].

Subsequently, due to the destruction during the uprising, the Colombian capital was modernized, the reconstruction of buildings was carried out taking into account modern trends and styles, and the introduction of modern building systems became increasingly common.

From an artistic and cultural point of view, we see that the development of modern aesthetics begins with artists such as Enrique Grau and Alejandro Obreg?n. Having been educated abroad, they arrive in Colombia with a desire for an aesthetic renewal of its artistic life in the 1940s and, introducing elements of European art into their work, create a Colombian version of the avant-garde. Thus, artists use avant-garde techniques to create their new critical art, leaving aside the Costumbrist and realistic painting of the beginning of the century. Echoes of European modernity can be seen in Colombian art, but with a political and social component. Recall that since the founding of the School of Fine Arts, Colombian art has been focused on academism, taking as a basis the genres of landscape and portrait. The art of the first decades of the XX century, with few exceptions, was exclusively decorative art.

This renewal and flourishing of modern art coincide with such important events for national history as the murder of Jorge Eliezer Gaitan, and thus these new aesthetic trends are connected with the reality of what is happening in the country. That is why, since the time of Bogotaso, the critical dimension of art has become increasingly important and has become a key part of the history of Colombian art right up to the present day. With the strengthening of the bipartisan repressive policy, art, which traditionally had a decorative dimension, began to gain strength as an important element of the social life of the people, transforming, exposing and reflecting social conflicts.

As Halim Badawi writes in his book "The Current History of Colombian Art": "Inadvertently, Bogotaso initiated the longest tradition of Colombian art: the tradition of a critical view, a tradition that, in addition to visual references to guerrilla and mafia violence, its satire on political power, its testimony or its desire to condemn, has become an art interested in not only the social situation in the country, but also the transformation of art itself" ^{[16, p. 396]}.

The paintings "The Burnt Tram" (1948) by Enrique Grau and "The Massacre of April 10" (1948) by Alejandro Obregona are the origin of this tradition of Colombian critical art, art that approaches national reality, which shows reality with or without the intention to transform it. These two works are part of the visual memory of Bogotaso and have had a profound impact on the visual memory of the country. But they are not the result of ideological doctrinization, but rather a way of perceiving reality from an aesthetic point of view. They take the phenomenon of catharsis as a basis and condemn violent actions. Thus, Grau's work is devoted to the destruction of a vehicle, it testifies to the chaos and destruction of the city. While Obregona 's work focuses on the consequences of the aforementioned chaos and dismemberment of human bodies . Arson by the civilian population, which is depicted by Grau, has the effect of mass killings of the same population by the state, which is written by Obregon.

Alejandro Obreg?n and Enrique Grau are among the Colombian artists who took on the role of chroniclers and described what happened. They were masters who, being touched by what they saw, decided that their works, in addition to a formal contribution, could be a reminder of the disasters of war, capable of conveying all the pain and depth of a bloody conflict. Starting with the events of Bogotaso, some artists began to be critical of their art, and although many of them, as in the case of Grau and Obregona, did not take sides in the political struggle, they throughout their lives created works condemning the bloody events in the country.

Illustration 1. Enrique Grau (1920-2004). A burnt-out tram. 1948. Oil, board. 51 x 57 cm, private collection.

Illustration 2. Sadi Gonzalez. A burnt-out tram. onethousandninehundredfortyeight Photo. Archive of the Luis Angel Arango Library Foundation.

Illustration 3. Alejandro Obreg?n (1920-1992). The massacre of April 10. 1948. Oil, board.  103 x 145 cm . The Ministry of Culture and the Association of Friends of the National Museum.

Illustration 4. Sadi Gonzalez. The central cemetery. onethousandninehundredfortyeight Photo. Archive of the Luis Angel Arango Library Foundation.