Jesús María Espinosa

He died in the city of Cali, Colombia in 1995 at the age of 86.

In the year 1939 the Fine Arts School of Music and Painting moved to the current location at the Centennial neighborhood.

In the opposite street of the Municipal Theater, now occupied by Pro-Arts, the art school was officially founded by Decree No. 98 of 1934 from the Government of Valle. It is named as founder and director of the same, Jesus Maria Espinosa Fernandez.

In 1933 Antonio María Valencia Zamorano, pianist and composer, who directed the Conservatory of Music in Cali, created by Resolution No 32 of the City Council, aims to start a School of Fine Arts and decides to call the young teacher Jesus Maria Espinosa, who was returning from Paris, after further studies art at one of the famous French art centers of the period: "The Academy JULIAN" conducted by Maestro Paul Albert Laurent.

Before traveling to Paris, Espinosa studied painting in Fine Arts in Bogotá, under the direction of maestro Roberto Pizano. While there, in 1929 he won a government scholarship contest, which took him to Europe.

Jesús María Espinosa Fernández (1908–1995) was a Colombian painter. He was born in the town of Belalcázar, in the Department of Cauca, Colombia on August 10, 1908.

When he returned to Colombia, he set up a small academy in the city of Cali. He met composer Antonio Maria Valencia (1902–1952) who suggested that Espinosa move his small academy of painting to the newly founded Cali's School of Fine Arts; then Espinosa founded the Visual Arts School in 1934.

He was educated in the city of Popayán, Colombia and then began his formal study of painting at the Escuela de Bellas Artes, in the capital Bogotá. He took lessons from art teacher Roberto Pizano (1896–1929). In 1929, he was awarded a scholarship by the Colombian government and traveled to Paris to continue his studies in painting at the prestigious Académie Julian, under the direction of Paul Albert Laurens (1870–1934).

Jesús María was a descendant of José María Espinosa (1796–1883), a painter and miniaturist known for his portraits of Antonio Nariño and of Simón Bolivar. As a youngster, Espinosa's paternal grandfather taught him how to paint; supported by him, Espinosa figured out a way to extract pigments from vegetables in order to give color to his first paintings.