Juan Manuel Echavarria
| Juan Manuel Echavarria | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1947 Medellín, Colombia |
| Nationality | Colombian |
| Known for | Photography, Video |
| Notable work | Bocas de Cenza, Corte de Florero, Death and the River |
| Movement | Current artist |
Juan Manuel Echavarria Olano is a present-day Latin American artist from Colombia. Born in 1947 in Medellín, Colombia and now resides in Bogotá, Colombia and New York City.
He studied at a university in the United States, and also spent time in Europe, specifically Greece, where he started to study mythology and poetry, and in his words, "became very dreamy". This showed up in his first book as he started his career as a writer publishing two novels, La Gran Catarata (1981) and Moros en la Costa (1991). He became fascinated with looking at history from different points of view, specifically looking at conquistadors confronted by cultures that were foreign. However, he soon became frustrated with writing as a creative outlet because his initial interest in literature stemmed from his love of the rich images it produced. Living and writing in New York, he told his artist friends that he was, "drowning in the world of writing". After realizing that he was more interested in imagery than writing, he turned to photography as a way to express the images and metaphors he wanted to portray.
Echavarria started to produce photography and videos in 1995 that deal with the violence and civil conflicts that have plagued Colombia in the 20th century and still today. His pictures and documentations depict a nation that has become accustomed to the brutality associated with the conflicts between the national army, guerrilla groups, and paramilitaries which started in the 1950s and have continued through the drugs cartels of the 1980s into present day aggression. This seemingly endless and forgotten war becomes a reality to the viewer who is faced with photographs and videos showing death and destruction.
In order to understand the contexts of Juan Manuel Echavarria's artwork, it is important to have a concept of Colombia's long history of violence that extends itself into the present day. Since Echavarria's birth in 1947, Colombia has not seen a year of peace. Over the last half century, Colombian violence has remained the largest conflict in the Western Hemisphere, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and displacing millions of people. The victims of the ongoing violence are mostly poor and vulnerable citizens. Echavarria captures the violence that has berrated his countryside throughout most of the 20th century in his artworks. A brief history of the different movements and groups since Echavarria's birth are listed as a backdrop to understand the perspective of the artist who provides viewers with such disturbing images.
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Wikipedia