Artist Birthday: Santiago Cárdenas

The countries of Central and South America experienced a Renaissance of modernism in art, due in part to influences these artists derived from Europe and the United States, and more importantly, because of the vibrant interest in developing modernist language that reflected influence from indigenous peoples’ subject matter and art.

Artist Birthday for 4 December: Santiago Cárdenas (1937-2006 Colombia)

Santiago Cárdenas Large Blackboard with Shelf, 1975, oil on canvas, 128 x 240 cm The Museum of Modern Art, New York, © 2025 Artist or Estate of Artist (MOMA-P2409)

Cárdenas became renowned for his illusionistic realism of everyday objects, redefining Pop Art's eye for parody into one for sensory reactions. Rather than opening onto space, Cárdenas' famous blackboard paintings, using illusionistic realism to create a presence akin to nature. The artist's blackboard paintings of the 1970s are perhaps Cárdenas' most renowned works. The blackboard paintings are examples of trompe-l'oeil ("fool the eye", illusionary) realism that harks back to Dutch Baroque still life that challenged what was real and what was not, where the painting ended, and reality kicked in. It is also reminiscent of 1800s American trompe-l’oeil painting which often featured subjects such as note boards or small slates with writing.

Background

A generation of artists born during or after World War II (1939-1945) from South America have achieved international recognition, partly as a result of their choosing to live and work in their countries of birth. During the mid-1900s, artists from countries such as Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico felt obliged to emigrate either to Europe or the United States to further their careers. Until that time, figurative, academic art was dominant in Colombia.

By the 1980s, the new generation of artists had learned what they could in Europe and America, but returned with that inspiration to their native Colombia. Where New York and Paris were once viewed as the dictatorial centers of the “art world,” the world artistic community now recognizes the validity of art made outside of those centers, accepted on its own terms. This includes radical experiment in media that help express indigenous society and issues.

Santiago Cárdenas was born in Bogota, and moved with his family at age 10 to Pelham, NY. He initially studied architecture at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, before switching to painting and drawing. After receiving his BFA in 1960, he entered the US Army where he served in Europe. In Europe he was inspired at seeing the work of prominent artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, particularly the Flemish Renaissance realists and the tenebristic paintings of Diego Velázquez (1599-1660). While studying thereafter at Yale for an MFA (1962-1964), he came under the influence of Pop Art figuration, particularly the work of Alex Katz (born 1927).

Cárdenas returned to Colombia in 1965, where he participated in groundbreaking modernism exhibitions as Espacios Ambientales in 1968, where his works contained Pop Art imagery in an illusionistic realism that emphasized the two-dimensional nature of the canvas. By 1967, Cárdenas was incorporating real objects in his works. He reversed the centuries-old Renaissance notion of painting being a "window" into another space, emphasizing instead extending into the viewer's space to encourage interaction with the work, both visually and tactilely. As his career progressed, by the 1980s Cárdenas explored a freer, more expressive use of color.