Roberto Páramo

Roberto Páramo (1859-1939) made these small landscapes in watercolor and oil and cardboard. They are little works, most just the size of a post-card or slightly larger. Mostly they depict rural scenes in the flat plains to the east of Bogotá. Páramo taught at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Bogotá for 38 years and never left his native Colombia.

These small, humble works of incredible beauty were the highlight of my visit to Bogotá’s museums last year. I remember asking the the clerk at the bookstore of the National Museum if there were any books on his work. He sighed and said, no. He explained that unless you’re an international art star like Fernando Botero, nobody cares and there’s no market for it. You can see more of Páramo’s images here.

Carlos Federico Saéz

Portrait by Carlos Federico Saéz, Uruguayan painter, 1878-1901

I enjoy visiting national art museums in small countries because you discover artists who, just because they didn’t move to New York or Paris, remained obscure but nevertheless produced amazing work. One such discovery I made last month while spending the weekend in Montevideo. On display at the Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales were about a dozen mid-sized oil paintings by Carlos Federico Saéz. The works reminded me of John Singer Sargent or Thomas Eakins and struck me as photographic, concerned with lighting and gesture. Saéz died at the absurdly young age of 22, producing some 70 works on oil.

Portrait by Carlos Federico Sáez