Omar Rayo

Omar Rayo (Roldadillo 1928 - Palmira 2010)

Omar Rayo was a painter, sculptor, caricaturist, and visual artist. The eldest son of Ray and Maria Luisa Reyes, he began his drawing studies through correspondence courses and later attended an academy in Buenos Aires. In 1947, he settled in Cali. Unable to find work as an illustrator for local newspapers, he supported himself by drawing caricatures and briefly attended the Academy of Fine Arts.

The following year, he moved to Bogotá, where he worked as an illustrator for various publications in the capital. He was hired by the newspaper El Siglo to create caricatures of the participants in the Pan American Games and the Ninth Conference. In the city, he frequented the Café Automático, a meeting place for intellectuals and writers such as León de Greiff, Luis Vidales, and Jorge Zalamea. From this period on, he began his own production, with works such as a series of wood-chip portraits of the bohemian café-goers, as well as stylized human figures created from elongated forms.

Between 1948 and 1953, he held several exhibitions, won competitions, and gained some recognition in the capital's art scene. In 1953, he had the opportunity to study in Madrid on a scholarship, but he chose to travel throughout Latin America, performing and exchanging experiences with local artists. During this journey, he lived with indigenous people from the Amazon and studied Inca and Mesoamerican art. This contact with pre-Columbian art was decisive for his development and sparked his interest in geometry as an artistic language, which would become the foundation of his work.

He returned to Colombia in 1958 and, the following year, with the support of a scholarship, spent a year in Mexico at the La Esmeralda printmaking workshop, where he met artists such as José Luis Cuevas and Francisco Toledo. In 1960, he received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation and moved to New York, where he would settle permanently in 1976 and where his work would achieve international recognition.

During this period, he dedicated himself especially to the technique of intaglio relief, addressing diverse themes in series on animals, everyday objects, and human figures. In 1970, he received a special prize at the Latin American Printmaking Biennial in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and, that same year, first prize at the National Artists' Salon of Colombia. In 1971, the Museum of Modern Art in Bogotá organized a retrospective exhibition of his work, and he participated in the São Paulo Biennial.

Although his printmaking received great recognition, Rayo devoted himself intensely to painting, developing a unique geometric style influenced by pre-Columbian art and abstract primitivism. His compositions are characterized by overlapping shapes that create patterns with striking optical effects, giving the works an illusion of three-dimensionality and a sense of infinite continuity. The rigorous use of geometry, black and white, or vibrant colors, combined with technical precision, intensifies the visual experience of contemplation.

In 1981, he opened the Rayo Museum of Latin American Drawing and Engraving in his hometown. Designed by Mexican architect Leopoldo Gout, the museum houses approximately two thousand works by the artist, as well as exhibition rooms, a library, and printmaking workshops.