Page 47 - Studio International - September 1967

Negret states that only lately has he been deeply inter- went to New York, where he arrived at the time the New
ested in pre-Colombian art, and this interest, at least at York school of painting was being forged. However
his present stage, is reflected in his attitude to art rather Negret did not come into contact with these artists, but
than the form of his works. The first break with the went to work at the Clay Club Sculpture Centre, where
academic school of thought came through the Spanish everybody was experimenting with new materials. This
ceramicist and sculptor Jorge Oteiza (b. 1908) with first visit lasted only until the next year, when he returned
whom he was in contact around 1944-6. Oteiza showed to Colombia with the work he had done and exhibited it
him, among other things, a book about Henry Moore, in Bogota. A few months later he left Colombia for
and it was through this that the essential realization Europe, going first to Paris where he stayed two years
and had his first European one-man show at the GALERIE
ARNAUD. In 1953 he went to Spain and renewed contact
with Jorge Oteiza; they worked together on their entries
for the international sculpture competition for a memorial
to the Unknown Political Prisoner, which was won by
Reg Butler. Afterwards Negret went to Mallorca where
he began to work in painted metal. He exhibited these
works at the PERIDOT GALLERY in New York, where
examples were bought by the Museum of Modern Art
and by Nelson Rockefeller, and where he had already
shown during his first visit. Negret then settled in New
York and remained for eight years—his longest stay any-
where since he left home. During these years he had two
more one-man exhibitions and took part in group exhibi-
tions, taught, and was awarded a UNESCO scholarship
for the study of Indian art. In 1963 he finally returned to
Colombia and made Bogota his home, and in 1965 he
represented his country alone at the Sao Paolo biennale.
As Negret's career is not well known here, it seemed
worth describing it in some detail. Of the fifteen one-man
exhibitions Negret has had since 1943, six have been in
South America, five in the United States, and only four
in Europe. The exhibition in Edinburgh was the first in
Europe since 1953. In short, Negret's reputation, though
high, has hardly yet penetrated to Europe, although he
has taken part in international sculpture exhibitions in
Paris (1951, 1961, 1966), London (the Unknown Political
Prisoner, 1953), Spoleto (1963), and Berlin (1964). But
there has been little chance for Europe to assess what
preceded the work he has now brought to Britain. These
notes are based on his conversations with the writer in
Edinburgh, where the sculptures in their purity of matt
black and red, and their spatial dynamism—an excep-
tional combination of austere restraint and flamboyance
Navigator 1965
—made a deep impression in the white rooms of the
black painted aluminium
44 x 24 in. Demarco Gallery.
The genesis of Negret's present work was first, as al-
ready seen, in the influence of Henry Moore's hollowed
sculptures, which gave him the necessary constructive
came to him that sculpture is not merely solid body but attitude to space; secondly in the work in sheet metal he
is also space, that void and solid are only dialectical did under the influence of the experimental art of New
opposites which it is the sculptor's job to resolve. This York. Of the two great prototypes in the use of steel in
was the message of Henry Moore's 'holes', from which sculpture, Calder and Gonzales, Negret chose the way of
Negret traces his beginnings as a modern sculptor. The Calder. It is not clear how much he knew of the work of
immediate effect of Moore can be seen in works of 1947-9, either man on his first visit to New York. Gonzales' work
such as the Head of the Baptist in the University of he probably did not know directly until he reached Paris,
Nebraska collection, a skull head cast from plaster scored and he admits to having been fascinated by it, but it was
with a knife or a file, the eye sockets hollowed out to the apparently without influence on his work. Calder he
back of the head. Whether or not Negret knew of Moore's admires, but has never felt attracted by his use of move-
early 'Mexican' works, it was Moore who provided the ment, which he feels leaves too much to chance. Negret
impulse to look at pre-Colombian art. By 1949 Negret wants movement in his work and is an admirer of kinetic
was already a prizewinner in the Colombian national art, but more of the kind exemplified by his fellow South
`Salon' in Bogota and had been seen in several shows. He American Soto—in which the kinetic effect is provided