Debora Arango

I have just returned from a trip to America. In the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte is an extraordinary exhibition of pictures by the Colombian artist, Debora Arango (1907-2005). These are striking and disturbing pictures. The obvious English analogy is the work of Paula Rego. Many pictures are shockingly confrontational depictions of figures, particularly women, suffering at the hands of others. Some are openly political, others Feminist and others straightforward paintings of her friends. One of those excellent exhibitions where one arrives with no knowledge (I hadn’t heard of her) and leaves with a hunger to know more about her life and work and to know something of the mid century politics of Colombia.