González is a leading and influential artist in Colombia, whose work reflects a deep interest in her country's history and vernacular art forms. Informed by the violent and politically tumultuous era of the 1940s and 1950s in which she grew up, her paintings, drawings, and sculptures mix popular and commercial forms with nods to "high" art, exploring political, social, and domestic subjects with equal insight. During the 1970s, González worked on a series of paintings executed in enamel on metal sheets mounted on mass-produced furniture. The image that appears in Canción de cuna (Lullaby) was taken from a collection of kitsch photographs distributed by a popular print company in Colombia. Found in the streets of Bogotá, the crib used in the sculpture once belonged to a public hospital. The iconic image of mother and child—a theme that has recurred throughout art history—is transformed by González into an ambiguous image of maternity, hinting at the sharp social observation that distinguishes her work.
Gallery label from Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960-1980, September 5, 2015–January 3, 2016.
