by SUNEET CHOPRA
is difficult for an artist to portray historical figures in their true human perspective as everyone feels they know them already. So what we get are stereotyped images that are mere lifeless symbols. But a recent exhibition in New Delhi of the works of the Colombian-born artist Gabriel Atencio Ruiz, who studied art at Escuela Cristobal Rojas in Venezuela and has a degree in architecture from Colombia, came as a breath of fresh air in representing a well-known South American hero, Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan general who fought for and won the freedom of Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia from Spain between 1819 and 1825 and died in 1830 of tuberculosis at the age of 46.
Simon Bolivar lived in a period of history when great events such as the French Revolution of 1789 took place and a number of countries created liberators of their people from European monarchies and colonial powers. South America saw the liberation of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina. In the Caribbean, the islands of Haiti and later Cuba were liberated in this period. In time, the revolutionary French Republic was itself overthrown by Napoleon Bonaparte, who then established an empire.
But the days of empires were coming to an end. The Napoleonic dispensation did not last beyond 1815, except in Sweden where Napoleon’s general, Count Bernadotte, became the king. Bolivar did not live long but the rule he established has persisted to this day. Not only has he a country named after him; his motherland too is styled today as a “Bolivarian republic”, 231 years after his death. Perhaps, it is a sign of our times that empires are crumbling while national liberation movements show a remarkable resilience.
How do we portray a leader of such a process of popular self-expression? Clearly, it cannot be done like a theatrical imperial presentation with the leader as larger than man.
Ruiz has not only chosen to portray Bolivar as a human being with many sides to his personality but highlighted the context in which he operated as one of the people. These paintings are well researched through documentary evidence and social perception.
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