"Los Silleteros" Painting

Fernando Oramas was a Colombian artist born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1925. He grew up in an artistic family environment and from a very early age received his first painting classes. At the age of 18, he enrolled in the school of Fine Arts of Bogotá, Colombia. After concluding his stage of academic formation, Fernando began to travel through different countries of Central America and some Caribbean islands organizing art exhibitions, painting, and graphic workshops. In Guatemala, he met and became friends with Ernesto “El Che” Guevara and recived award of the Government of Guatemala. In Mexico City, he took classes in mural painting with Diego Rivera at the National University. Sometime later, he taught himself in summer courses at that University and recived award of the Bosque de Chapultepec. With Rivera, he participated in the painting of two of his big murals. Later on, he joined David Alfaro Siqueiros´s muralist team helping the elaboration of 4 murals before his expatriation from that country in 1962. In the ’70s, Fernando founded a movement of plastic artists and set the public art gallery grouping various artists aiming to promote their work to the wide audiences as Siqueiros did in Mexico. At the same time and throughout the ’80s, Fernando worked as a cartoonist in several leftist newspapers and made several murals in some public and cultural buildings in Bogota. At the age of 63, while setting down with his wife and children, Fernando moved away from the artistic district dedicating himself to painting in the tranquility of his home. Fernando died in 2016 leaving an important artistic legacy for Colombia and the world over.