Rómulo Rozo

Rómulo Rozo Peña was a sculptor, born in Bogota in 1899 (some authors affirm that he was born in Chiquinquirá, Boyacá). He lived a long part of his life in Mexico and died in the city of Mérida, Yucatán, in 1964. He got married two times, the first in Czechoslovakia, during his stay in Europe, with Ana Krauss who knew in Paris, with which had three children: Rómulo, Gloria and Leticia. The second with Manuela Vera, yucateca, with which had two children: Marco Antonio and Gloria Antonia.^[1]

Studies

He did his first studies in the National School of Fine arts and afterwards in the Central Technical Institute of Bogota. In Europe, where he travelled still young, between the years 1924 and 1929, he studied in the Academy of Fine arts of Saint Fernando in Madrid and afterwards completed his studies in Paris, France, with Antoine Bourdelle the one who exerted big influence in his works. He participated in the Exhibition IberoAmericana of Seville in 1929 where won with his participation the Big Prize and the Medal of gold, before returning to America.^[1]

Bachué and Seville

In 1925 in Paris makes one of his master works, "Bachué goddess generatriz of the chibchas", a sculpture in granite that cause him great recognition world-wide art by his odd and exotic reference to the Colombian pre-Columbian mythology. The work is a reference to the goddess Bachué, mother of the muisca civilisation in their mythology, an unprecedented representation due to the fact that this culture never created an iconography of his deities neither based his beliefs in the cult to the image. The repercussion of the international press to this work converted to Rozo in the artist of greater international recognition until this date, and the scope of his influence would feel prompt in Colombia when the newspapers published images of the "Bachué..." and of the new works made by Rómulo Rozo, in which it mixed his academic knowledges of the western art with own elements of Latin American native cultures, Asian and African, many of these referents taken of the collections of ancient civilisations in the Museums of Louvre and Trocadero.^[2] In honour to the increasing admiration to the production of Rozo in Colombia an ephemeral literary movement called The Bachués created in 1930, that advocated the review of the vernacular roots for the creation of an own art, in opposition to the academic art and.^[3][4][5] By the continuity of this influence in the plastic arts, shown in the production of all of the artists of this generation (Luis Alberto Acuña, Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo, Pedro Nel Gómez, Ramón Barba, José Domingo Rodríguez, Hena Rodríguez, Miguel Sopó, Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, among others), the "Bachué, goddess generatriz of the chibchas" by Rozo has been arduously signalled as the foundational sculpture of the modern art in Colombia. The recognition obtained by Rozo thanks to this work was another of the factors determinants in that the Colombian government took it into the project of the Pavilion of Colombia in the Exhibition Iberoamericana of 1929 in Seville.

In 1928, Rozo it was hired to make the ornamentation of the building that would represent to Colombia in the Exhibition Iberoamericana of Seville of 1929. Although the building was projected by the Spanish architect José de Granados, Rozo received the structure and reformed the original idea of Granados that did allusion to a baroque church, to turn it into a temple with an ornamental reference to the chibchas gods of the Colombian prehispanic territory.^[2][2][6] Rozo asked the collector of the Bachué to loan the work, so could be placed in the middle of the building during the year that lasted the event. Around it, Rozo created the figures in plaster and concrete, with clear referents to the cultures Tolima, Saint Agustín, Muiscas and even Mayas. The final result finished being a building sui generis, by the odd beauty between the conjunction of a religious architecture with a decoration without antecedents based in pre-Columbian civilisations. Again the repercussion of the press concluded in an unprecedented success for the sculptor, who however decided not returning to Colombia but establish in Mexico in 1931.

In spite of the great influence of The Bachué in all the nationalist generation of artists of the first-half of 20th century in Colombia, the work disappeared after his participation in Seville. Only in 1998 (68 years after) it was found by the art historian Álvaro Medina, and exhibited for the first time in Colombia in the exhibition "Colombia in the threshold of the modernity", curated by the same researcher.^[7]

During the timethe work was missing, a new wave of young artists and the media power of the Argentinian art critic Marta Traba overshadowed the contributions of this generation, condemning it to a second place in the history of the Colombian art that only was reassessed since its reappearance. In spite of his historical value no cultural institution in Colombia showed interest in purchasing it. However, the work is part of the collection of the Foundation Project Bachué, a platform interested in the conservation and gathering of Colombian art .^[8][9]

References

1. Casares G. Cantón, Raúl; Duch Colell, Juan; Antochiw Kolpa, Michel; Zavala Vallado, Silvio et ál (1998). "Yucatán en el tiempo". Mérida, Yucatán. ISBN 970 9071 04 1.
2. AA.
3. Padilla, Christian.
4. "La llamada de la tierra: el nacionalismo en la escultura colombiana". Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá - Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avandaño. 2008.
5. "Una vanguardia: Rómulo Rozo y Los Bachués". El Tiempo. 29 October 2013.
6. "Una fachada para mostrar: Colombia en la Exposición Iberoamericana de Sevilla en 1929". 1929: El Pabellón de Colombia en la Exposición Iberoamericana de Sevilla (Editorial Bachué). 2014.
7. "El regreso de la ‘Bachué’ de Rómulo". El Espectador. 12 July 2008.
8. "El coleccionista". Esquire. s.f. Check date values in: |date= (help)
9. "Proyecto Bachué".