Beatriz Gonzalez

In 1985 González's work took a dramatic stylistic shift from its vibrant colors and shapes, to more dark imagery. This was after the M-19 guerrilla attack on the Palace of Justice in an attempt to try to president, they left 94 dead. Feeling that she couldn't laugh after that event, she began to explore themes of death and the drug trade as well as exploring some of Colombia's most tragic events.

After accompanying her husband who is an architect to a hardware store in the 1970s, she began her work on various pieces of store-bought furniture that would generally be found in middle-class households earlier in the century. Typically she would take her images from well known Italian Renaissance and history paintings, or pictures from the present day news media, transferring these images onto cheap nightstands, chairs, coffee tables and beds painted by an amateur painter. She carefully coordinated her images with the furniture's function, such as painting the popes face on nightstands, conjuring up devotional images commonly found over beds or on nightstands in the average Colombian household.

In 1965 González created a painting entitled The Suicides of Sisga, the painting was based on a picture of a young couple that had been published in a local newspaper after they jumped off the dam of the river Sisga in order to preserve the purity of their love. This work was initially refused at the 1965 Salon of Colombian Artists, disregarded and brushed off by the Jury as a "bad Botero". After one of González's friends and mentors, Marta Traba pressed the Jury to reconsider their decision, the painting was not only accepted, but Gonzáles won a special prize for her work, that eventually helped launch her career.

One of González's most well known and earliest works depicts a young couple standing holding hands with one other and a bouquet of flowers with a slight smile on their faces. This painting was based on a photo that originally appeared in the press of a couple who commissioned a professional photographer to take their portrait before jumping off the dam of the Sisga on the outskirts of Bogotá. The couple were two young farmers who were deeply in love, but in an effort to preserve the purity of their love, the man (who was suspected to be mentally insane) convinced his girlfriend to commit suicide as a way to show their religious devotion in not wanting to sully the woman's purity. The picture was sent to their families, and when the news broke it was widely reprinted in black and white in the local newspapers. González claimed that she was attracted to this picture due to its "bad quality" or more so its plain quality, the simplification of the facial features that were almost deformed by the discrepancy. This painting was the first of a number of paintings done by González in the 1960s in which she explored the intense violence in Colombia. During this time she produced a series of ink drawings on the same theme, that were tabloid photos of crimes of passion and political murders as well as advertisements for everything from bodybuilding to headache cures.

González grew up in Colombia during the 1940s and 50s, while the country was plagued with violence and war due to the social and political upheaval known as La Violencia. Growing up during this time largely influenced González's understanding of Colombia society, and eventually even her artistic style.

Beatriz González (born 1932) is a Colombian painter, sculptor, critic, curator and art historian. González is often associated with the Pop Art movement. She is best known for her bright and colorful paintings depicting life in Colombia during the war-torn period known as La Violencia.

Beatriz González was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia in 1932. She is the youngest daughter of Valentín González Rangel and Clementina Aranda Mantilla. In the late 1950s, she enrolled in architecture school, but she dropped out only a few years later. She returned to Bucaramanga in 1958. González ended up enrolling in University of Los Andes (Colombia), graduating from their fine arts department in 1962. While there, she was a student of Argentine art critic and historian Marta Traba and Spanish painter Joan Antonio Roda.