Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is pleased to present Beatriz González: A Retrospective, a monumental survey spanning six decades of the artist’s intensive research that addresses cultural and political issues specific to the artist’s home country of Colombia. On view from April 18, 2019, through September 1, 2019, the exhibition is González’s first career retrospective in the United States, providing a much-needed look at a Modern Colombian Art pioneer who offers one of the most nuanced and exciting art expressions of the postwar period in Latin America.

With over 150 works spanning 1960–present, the exhibition will embody the full scope of Gonzalez’s oeuvre, as well as her political production and commitment to documenting the violence perpetuated by the civil war in her country over the last three decades. The exhibition is co-organized PAMM with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in tandem with PAMM Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander and Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas, MFAH.

“We are thrilled to present an exhibition by Beatriz González that truly shows the breadth and intensity of her work,” said PAMM Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander. “This exhibition underscores PAMM’s mission of presenting artists that reflect our community and speak to the Miami audience. It includes several works from our permanent collection, highlighting PAMM’s interest in not only displaying works by contemporary Latin American artists, but also adding their work to our permanent collection.”

The artist is often identified with the global Modern Columbian Art movement due to her iconoclastic method of appropriating images associated with Western art history, as well as the commercial printing and massmedia outlets of her native Colombia. This retrospective highlights her ever-changing method, with works on paper, furniture, and sculpture co-existing. While continuing to draw primarily from newspaper images and art historical sources, her recent paintings have become more complex in terms of composition as well as the use of collage to paint-in images taken from diverse media narratives and sources.

While always innovative and unpredictable in terms of subject matter and artistic strategy, the depth and intensity of González’s sui generis approach to individual and collective grief is unparalleled in contemporary art. Her focus on indigenous, rural, and displaced communities is a common throughline in her work. Her brightly-colored works belay González’s greater mission: to loudly proclaim injustices whether they are ripped from the headlines, or missing from the headlines.

Highlights of the exhibition include González’s 1965 painting, Los suicidas del Sisga II & III, which take imagery from an infamous photograph left behind of two lovers who had drowned themselves in the Sisga dam to preserve their love, and Los papagayos (1986), which depicts the corrupt leaders of Colombia during that time.

This exhibition is exemplary of PAMM’s mission to present art and stories from historically underrepresented communities, from the African diaspora to the Latin American and Latinx communities. In 2018, PAMM introduced the Latin American and Latinx Art Fund, a new

Beatriz González: A Retrospective will premiere at Pérez Art Museum Miami from April 18, 2019 to September 1, 2019 before traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in October 2019. The exhibition is curated by Tobias Ostrander, Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Pérez Art Museum Miami and Mari Carmen Ramírez, Wortham Curator of Latin American Art and Director, International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. They are assisted by Maritza Lacayo, Curatorial Assistant, PAMM, Rachel Mohl, Assistant Curator, Veronica Sesana Grajales, Curatorial Assistant, Latin American and Latino Art at the MFAH, the MFAH’s International Center for the Arts of the Americas research team, and José Ruiz Diaz and Natalia Gutiérrez from Beatriz González’s studio in Bogotá.

Major national support for the exhibition is provided by The Diane and Bruce Halle Foundation. At PAMM, this exhibition is presented with lead individual support from Karen H. Bechtel and William M. Osborne. Additional gifts from Patricia and William Kleh, Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky, and Nedra and Mark Oren are also gratefully acknowledged. Support from Morgan Stanley and PAMM's International Women's Committee in addition to the Miami-Dade County Tourist Development affiliate group created to support exhibitions and programming at PAMM for Latin American and Latinx artists. The fund will directly support Beatriz Gonzáles: A Retrospective as well as dynamic programming around the exhibition, which will foster a deeper understanding of the works on view and the artist’s process.