Rómulo Rozo is a Colombian sculptor associated with Indigenism, a movement that aimed to move away from the European artistic tradition by embracing the visual culture of Indigenous communities. The sculpture Bachué (1925) depicts the creation myth of the Muisca people of central Colombia. The sculpture is divided into two distinct parts: from the torso upwards, Bachué – a mother deity – wears a crown consisting of nine snail shells, one for each month of pregnancy; above her, a boy is nestled in a conical shape. In the myth, Bachué and the boy create humanity from a lagoon before Bachué turns into a water serpent, depicted in the bottom half of the sculpture by a descending serpentine spiral. The sculpture, modern in its form and expression of motion, is indebted to the aesthetic languages of many Indigenous cultures across Colombia. In 1930, after seeing a photograph of this artwork published in a newspaper, a generation of young artists decided to break from their academicist formation towards new forms of making, inspired by modernism and Indigeneity. These artists, considered the first movement of modern art in Colombia, named themselves the Bachués.
This is the first time the work of Rómulo Rozo is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Diego Chocano
