The paradoxes of art: wall opening up —by Eduardo Ramírez Villamizar— is there, exposed for those who, attracted by the color, stop walking and look up. You don’t have to go to a museum to see it. Its showroom is an exterior wall of the Centro Fabricato-Colseguros building, in Maracaibo with Avenida Oriental.
And it is not just any work by any artist: the sculpture is —for Camilo Castaño, assistant curator of the Museo de Antioquia— the most brilliant and intelligent in the city. Carlos Uribe —chief curator of the same museum— shares the assessment, and even takes it further by stating that wall opening up It is the “most significant urban sculpture that has been made in the city, and without a doubt, in Colombia.”
Ramírez Villamizar is one of the great names of Colombian art in the 20th century. In a text published by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bogotá, Gustavo Ortiz Serrano confers on the artist’s work the category of pioneer of abstract sculpture in Latin America.
Along with Edgar Negret, Ramírez Villamizar —born in Pamplona in 1922 and died in Bogotá in 2004— is one of the pillars of Colombian sculpture. Carlos Uribe also uses the word pioneer to talk about North Santander, in this case abstract and minimalist art in the country. “It can be said of Colombian art that Fernando Botero is the modern language in figuration, and Ramírez Villamizar the introducer of modern language in abstraction.”
And yet, despite the aesthetic and heritage value of the work, wall opening up is a headache for the co-owners of Centro Fabricato-Colseguros. They are the ones in charge of ensuring its conservation, the ones responsible for paying for the painting and washing interventions and, from what Alison Araque Echavarría, administrator of the property, says, they are not very willing to do so.
Of a vital work to understand the history of Colombian art, wall opening up it has become a burden, a “white elephant,” says Araque Echavarría. It has been so so that the administration of the building has sent two letters to the secretariat of citizen culture of Medellín: the first —dated in July 2021— with the aim of donating the work; the second – from January 2022 – with the express request for authorization to remove it because “it has become unsustainable for co-ownership (…) we lack the necessary resources for its conservation,” the document reads. In both cases the answers were no: the secretariat does not have the money to take charge of the work and it is not the pertinent entity to give the green light to the clearing.
Between 1975 and 1992, a municipal agreement stimulated the flourishing of art in public spaces. The norm established the conditions in which the builders had to equip the buildings with works of plastic art. In this context, the builders of the Fabricato-Colseguros Center commissioned a large sculpture from Ramírez Villamizar: twenty-four meters high and eleven meters wide. From its materials, the piece challenges, questions. He remembers a truth at hand: the city is an imaginary construction, a crossroads of different narratives: those of the economy, history, politics. In the words of Uribe, the work is responsible for not letting us forget that “the city mutates, is alive and is permanently transformed.”
The Medellin Memory, Heritage and Historical Archives program—depending on the secretariat of citizen culture—is in charge of approximately 200 sculptural pieces. Taking care of them is a nut that turns and turns and turns: climatic factors, vandalism and citizen indifference force recurrent spending.
A work of art cannot be left to its fate: in a short time the harshness of the city will turn it into a pile of junk, blurring the artist’s intentions. This happens to Muro opening up —with the peculiarity that because it is private property, the State cannot invest money in it—: the years and the weather have taken their toll. In addition, not all interventions benefit the work: expert personnel in these trades must be hired.
Carlos Uribe is forceful in questioning the treatment given to the work of Ramírez Villamizar: “Several maintenance —not restorations— have been carried out, most of them without consultation and carried out by non-professionals in the field, which have deformed the work, and generated problems of water accumulation and accelerated oxidation of its materials”. Indeed, when approaching the work, any pedestrian can see parts affected by metal corrosion.
The matter is a dead end: the co-owners of Centro Fabricato-Colseguros do not have the resources to guarantee a long life for the work. The secretary of culture neither. Araque Echavarría has an alternative: the generosity of a patron can open paths.
With the deterioration of Wall opening the Center loses one of its treasures. Again Uribe is emphatic: “The center of Medellín would not be the same without the sculptural structure of Ramírez Villamizar, he would not have assigned it the character of a modern city that it reflects today.”
A heritage of the city crumbles before everyone.