TILBURG.- The De Pont Museum announced the acquisition of two works from the iconic series Las Delicias (1996-1998) by Colombian artist Beatriz Gonz醠ez: Las Delicias 12 and Las Delicias 13. Both works will be on view in Tilburg until March 9 as part of the exhibition Beatriz Gonz醠ez - War and Peace, a comprehensive retrospective of this influential Latin American artist.


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The Las Delicias series was inspired by the tragic events of 30 August 1996, when 60 young soldiers were kidnapped by the FARC guerrilla movement at the Las Delicias military base in southern Colombia. During the attack, several soldiers lost their lives, and the survivors were held captive for 288 days. This harrowing event left a profound mark on Colombian society and inspired Gonz醠ez to create this poignant series of small paintings.

At 92 years old, Gonz醠ez continues to highlight universal expressions of grief through her work. The Las Delicias series depicts women covering their faces with their hands in an act of mourning. Gonz醠ez describes the series as “a representation of pain, a symbol that reflects both individual sorrow and collective suffering. The simple act of hiding one’s face with one’s hands is a universal gesture of loss and mourning.”

With this acquisition, De Pont enriches its collection of Beatriz Gonz醠ez’s work, emphasizing its commitment to a world perspective and to making the oeuvre of this influential Latin American artist more accessible. Alongside institutions like Tate Modern, Reina Sofia, and MoMA, De Pont stands among a select group of Western museums to collect Gonz醠ez’s work.

Beatriz Gonz醠ez (1932) is the grand dame of contemporary South American art and an iconic cultural figure in her homeland of Colombia. War and Peace: A Poetics of Gesture provides an overview of the many decades of her impressive career. The exhibition also offers a new perspective on how Gonz醠ez approaches figures and gestures as vehicles for conveying emotion.

Since 1962, Gonz醠ez has used painting as a means of claiming and interpreting existing images from Western art, pop culture and photojournalism. As a result, her work has often been described as the South American version of pop art – an assertion the artist has always contested. Gonz醠ez prefers to refer to herself – with some degree of self-mockery – as a “peripheral painter” whose palette echoes the colours of her native country. In the early 1990s, in response to the growing number of atrocities and political incidents taking place in Colombia, her work became darker and more radical in nature. She began to address themes such as death, drugs, soldiers and guerilla violence, disappearances and (more recently) migration as a national and global phenomenon.


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