Lucy Tejada was a pioneer who helped consolidate modernism in Colombia and was among the first women to be recognised as a professional artist in her country. A timeless image of agricultural fecundity, El sembrador (1958) was created during a period of professional success and international recognition. In 1958, Tejada was selected to represent Colombia at the First Interamerican Painting Biennial in Mexico City and the 1958 Venice Biennale, alongside a solo exhibition at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango and a series of public commissions. To communicate both the fertility of her native land and its burgeoning modernity, Tejada represents man and earth in harmony with a modernist vocabulary of geometricised forms. With a pale, almost translucent palette, Tejada simplifies the body to the blunt contours of its outlines, recalling her training as an engraver. Blurring figure into ground, composed of flat planes of vivid colour, Tejada gestures to geometric abstraction but retains narrative symbolism: the natural landscape is miniaturised in the form of the shooting sprout nurtured by human hands.
—Lucia Neirotti
