Residents of the city of Cali, artists María de la Paz Jaramillo (born 1948) and Óscar Muñoz (born 1951)—the latter of whom would become one of the most internationally recognized artists from Colombia in the 1980s—held a joint exhibition at the Centro de Arte Actual in the city of Pereira. That venue was known for holding exhibitions of contemporary artists in a region that, at that time, was at a remove from the latest tendencies and debates in art.
This is one of the few texts that describe the artistic processes of Jaramillo and Muñoz during the early phases of their production. Critic Astrid Muñoz places emphasis on the fact that, though they employ very different modes of representation, they share fundamental concerns and critical intentions.
In the seventies, Jaramillo and Muñoz, who were close friends, undertook some projects together. Jaramillo’s experience living in the city of Cali was decisive to her work; it was there that she discovered the themes that her work would address for many years. On the basis of their experiences in the rumba salsera scene in Cali, Jaramillo and Muñoz put together a portfolio entitled Bailando salsa [Dancing Salsa] (1978). That project made use of photographic material by Gertjan Bartelsman (born 1949) from which the artists selected images of two couples dancing that they then spliced together in a photomontage that served as the basis for a series of graphic works.
Astrid Muñoz calls Óscar Muñoz a “non-conformist who is constantly investigating resources.” During the early and mid-1970s, after his first exhibition at Ciudad Solar entitled Dibujos morbosos [Morbid Drawings] (1971), humor would become crucial to his work. It was in a burlesque spirit that he presented a group of five drawings depicting Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in the exhibition Nombres nuevos [New Names] (1972) held at the Museo de Arte Moderno of Bogotá. By combining two images, Muñoz drew “twelve gentlemen whose upper bodies were dressed in elegant attire and whose lower bodies were nude, their legs crossed. This work was banned by the museum,” Muñoz explains. “Mr. Eduardo Serrano threatened me, saying that I would be a provincial artist my whole life […]. I’m very pleased to be a provincial artist…for my whole life.” This was how Muñoz described the incident to art critic Miguel González in an interview for the weekly El Pueblo de Cali, September 2, 1979, p. 5.