I spent a time in Colombia, between birds and bullets …. and the nice work by Luis Caballero …

Luis Caballero, Colombian (1943 – 1995)

One of the great masters of the male nude in the Twentieth Century, Caballero captures his human subjects with a combination of veracity and softness that portrays the artist’s inner emotions and feelings. Sensuality, eroticism, harmony, passion, agony, violence, pain, and pleasure are all revealed in Caballero’s masculine bodies. He is a poetic painter.

Contradicting the Dionysian with the Apollonian, Caballero creates a distinct form of drawing the nude. Admired as gods and drawn as desires, Caballero’s nudes are a reflection of the artist and the man. By mixing desire and aesthetic beauty, Caballero created a body of work unmatched in the Twentieth Century. He was able to transform a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional body that twists and turns with such fierce emotion that horrifies the viewer, but entices them into the work. Anguish radiates from the surface of the work forcing the viewer to see the body in front of them as raw emotion unclassified except to the individual himself.

The pigments on paper focus mainly on the torso and mid-section of the male nude. This exhibition reveals Caballero’s expertise in showing the movement, tone, strength and definition of muscle as well as to pay tribute to this extraordinary draftsman.

Luis Caballero’s works can be seen in public collections all over Europe, the United States and Latin America.

more info and paintings