From an early age, Colombian sculptor Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt (1939-1995) was interested in drawing and in the figure of Simón Bolívar, known as “the Liberator.” Born into poverty in Colombia, in 1944 Arenas Betancourt settled in Mexico City, where he had the opportunity to pursue his interest in sculpture, a field in which he earned widespread recognition.
An Argentine critic who lived in Bogotá starting in the early fifties, Marta Traba (1923–1983) presented four series of programs on Colombian television from 1954 to 1958: “ABC del arte moderno,” “El museo imaginario,” “Una visita a los museos,” and “Curso de historia del arte.” Traba spent two programs in the first series on the work of Arenas Betancourt. In them, she demonstrates thorough knowledge of Arenas Betancourt’s sculptural work produced in Mexico and deploys her known powers as an educator to explain the artist’s evolution as well as the distinctive characteristics of each phase of his career. Traba argues that in Arenas Betancourt’s homage to Bolívar he was able to dodge “the dangers of a false literary sculpture.” Traba’s position on Arenas Betancourt’s work is startling since she was a dogged critic of nationalist artists and art, and an eager advocate of all expressions of Modernism.