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Hernando Tejada

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In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Tejada and the second or maternal family name is Sáenz.
Hernando Tejada Sáenz
Tejada ca 1963
Born(1924-02-01)February 1, 1924
Pereira, Colombia
DiedJune 1, 1998(1998-06-01) (aged 74)
Cali, Colombia
Alma materDepartmental Institute of Fine Arts
National University of Colombia
Known forSculpture, painting
Notable workEl Gato del Río
Websitewww.hernandotejada.com

Hernando Tejada Sáenz (February 1, 1924 in Pereira, Colombia – June 1, 1998 in Cali, Colombia), was a Colombian painter and sculptor. His most well-known sculpture, El Gato del Río, is a famous landmark of Cali, Colombia.

Women and cats were common themes in his works. In his later years, another theme was the inclusion of mangroves and their surrounding environment.[1]

Hernando Tejada received the nickname of Tejadita, a diminutive of his last name, which alluded to the artist's relatively short stature of 1.50 meters tall.

Biography

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His early childhood life was in Manizales, along with his parents, José Tejada and Ismenia Sáenz, four brothers, and two sisters, including Lucy Tejada who was also an accomplished artist, and less recognized, his sister Teresita Tejada.[2] In 1937 his family moved to the city of Cali where he studied at the Departmental Institute of Fine Arts[3] with its founder and Professor Jesús María Espinosa and completed his studies at the National School of Fine Arts in Bogotá (today a part of the National University of Colombia).

Besides traditional painting, Tejada often worked with wood. He created a series of "furniture-piece" women, such as Teresa la mujer mesa ("Teresa the woman table") in 1969.[4] For one of his final wooden series, he sculpted mangroves and animals together, including snakes, monkeys, and pelicans. His mangrove series was exhibited at the 1998 Lisbon World Exposition in Portugal.

His last bronze sculpture was El Gato del Río, also known as El Gato de Tejada ("Tejada's Cat"). The sculpture is over three meters tall and three tons. It is located on the riverside of the Cali River and was gifted by Tejada to the city.

He died in Cali in 1998[5] after 43 days of hospitalization. After his death, his family sought to donate more than 3,000 paintings and 70 large works of art by the artist to art or cultural institutions in Cali. However, at the time of his death there was no serious interest in receiving his family's donation. In 2006, the Medellín Museum of Modern Art accepted the donation, including the artist's former house.[6]

Work

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Throughout the entirety of his artistic career, Hernando Tejada worked with multiple types of mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and audiovisual work.[7]

Cats, women, and mangroves were common themes in his works. Tejada's experiences in his travels across Colombia and Europe helped finish shaping his artistic style as it happened with Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin during their travels to Tahiti and with Wassily Kandinsky in Tunisia.[8]

Cats

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Gato en reposo (1979), carved and pigmented wood

The theme for which Hernando Tejada is mostly known is his depictions of the domestic cat, a recurring subject of artistic interpretation throughout his career. Tejada had a great admiration for the animal due to their docile, yet eradict, mysterious, and changing personalities, often comparing his own personality to this feline.[9]

Hernando Tejada's most famous work, El gato del río, is a 3.5 meter tall lost-wax cast monumental sculpture of a cat which Tejada executed in 1996 with financial support of the City of Cali. Today, it is the most visited sculpture in Colombia surpassing in popularity public sculptures by Fernando Botero, Édgar Negret, and Enrique Grau.[10]

Tejada was renowned for gifting drawings and wooden cats to his friends and lovers.[11]

Women

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Tejada posing with Teresa, la mujer mesa (1970)

Another important theme for Hernando Tejada is his interpretation of women, more specifically his functional women, or women furniture, series. This series consists of functional objects such as chairs, tables, and musical instruments in the figure of a woman. Tejada's first known work in this series was, and one of his first works with wood, is Rosario, la mujer armario executed in 1968, which Tejada produced with the necessity of needing a drawer to store socks.[12][13] In this series, others work include Teresa, la mujer mesa (1969), Sacramento, la mujer asiento (1970) which Tejada executed for the II Medellín Art Biennal, Isadora, la lechuza mecedora (1971), Abigail, la mujer atril (1972), Leonor, el tocador (1973), Paula, la mujer jaula (1974), Estefanía, la mujer telefonía (1975) which in the permanent collection of the MAMM, Mónica filarmónica (1976) which is in La Tertulia Museum, and Violeta, la mujer cometa (1978).[12]

Tejada incorporated women as the main theme in other artworks such as in paintings and smaller wooden objects.[14][15]

Mangroves

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From 1994, until 1997, Hernando Tejada produced his last artistic series around the theme of mangroves. In this series, Tejada sought to capture the wildlife and natural diversity that can be found inhabiting mangrove forests in the Pacific/Chocó natural region of Colombia.[16]

The works in this series were entirely executed using polychrome cedar wood.

Monuments and murals

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A promotional mural of Cali depicting Tejada's Gato del Río

In 1954, Hernando Tejada executed two mexican muralism-style fresco murals within the Railway Station in Cali.[17] One of the murals, Historia de Cali (1954), depicts the history of the city of Cali with Tejada drawing attention to Calima culture natives, Sebastián de Belalcázar, and Simón Bolívar amongst other scenes that include religious, agricultural, and industrial aspects. The other mural, Historia del transporte (1954), depicts the history of transportation in the city of Cali with Tejada bringing to attention various methods of transportation which helped the city of Cali to develop. Both murals are 9.5 meters by 20 meters in size.

Exhibitions

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Tejada's first solo exhibition was in 1965 at La Tertulia Museum where he exhibited a number of wooden sculptures.[18] Throughout the 1980s, Tejada was also exhibited as a solo artist at Galería Belarca, in Bogotá, Galería de Los Navas, in Cali, and at Galería Finale and in Grupo Sura's Galería Suramericana de Seguros in Medellín.[19]

In 1976, Hernando Tejada had a shared exhibition with his sister, Lucy Tejada, at the Cultural Center of Pereira.[18]

Select exhibitions

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  • 29 November 1984 – 31 December 1984: Hernando Tejada panorama de un artista at the Cali Chamber of Commerce
  • 20 June 2000 – 20 June 2001: Hernando Tejada 1924 - 1998: 30 Obras en Madera at the Comfandi Cultural Center
  • November 2005 – March 2006: H. Tejada: Retrospectiva su mundo at the Salón Central de MetroCali Mio[20]
  • 15 December 2014 – 22 February 2015: Tejadita: viajero y sibarita at La Tertulia Museum[21]
  • 26 April 2024 – 1 September 2024: Hernando Tejada. Viaje de vuelta at the Medellin Museum of Modern Art[22]

Public collections

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Hernando Tejada's work can be found in numerous public collections within Colombia. The Bank of the Republic has both paintings and sculptures which are displayed at the Miguel Urrutia Art Museum in Bogotá or at the bank's cultural center in Cali.[12] The National Museum of Colombia and the Bogotá Museum of Modern Art (MAMBO), both in Bogotá, maintain paintings by the artist.[23][24] In Cali, the last city where Tejada worked and lived, works can be found at La Tertulia Museum and at the Hernando Tejada Museum located within El Finestral Gallery.[25] The largest collection of Tejada's work is held by the Medellín Museum of Modern Art, in Medellín, with over 3,000 works donated by the family of the artist.[26]

Internationally, Tejada's work can be found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in New York City.[27]

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Selected works

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References

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  1. ^ "Manglar del mico". La Tertulia Museum. Archived from the original on 15 December 2019. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  2. ^ "Hernando Tejada (1924 – 1998)". Centro Virtual Isaacs. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  3. ^ "Instituto de Bellas Artes Cali". bellasartes.edu.co. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
  4. ^ Marta Traba (1 January 1994). Art of Latin America: 1900-1980. Inter-American Development Bank. pp. 130–131. ISBN 978-0-940602-73-1.
  5. ^ Daniel Jacobs; Rough Guides; Stephen Keeling (1 October 2018). The Rough Guide to Colombia (Travel Guide eBook). Apa Publications (UK) Limited. p. 453. ISBN 978-1-78919-513-2.
  6. ^ Ospina, Yefferson (11 March 2018). "El legado de Hernando Tejada que Cali no ha querido recibir". El Pais. Retrieved 15 July 2019.
  7. ^ "Hernando Tejada (1924 – 1998)". cvisaacs.univalle.edu.co (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: Universidad del Valle. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  8. ^ Enopión de Quíos. DON TEJADA, EL TALLISTA DE LO MÁGICO POPULAR.
  9. ^ "La alemana que saldó una deuda histórica de Cali: el museo de Hernando Tejada". 90minutos.co (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: 90 minutos. 26 July 2024. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  10. ^ "Esta es la historia real detrás del emblemático Gato de Tejada y sus gatas". elpais.com.co (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: El País de Cali. 18 November 2018. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  11. ^ "La alemana que saldó una deuda histórica de Cali: el museo de Hernando Tejada". 90minutos.co (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: 90 minutos. 26 July 2024. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  12. ^ a b c "Sacramento y Abigail se reencuentran en Cali". banrepcultural.org. Cali, Colombia: Banco de la República. 8 August 2024. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  13. ^ ""Sacramento" y "Abigail" se reencuentran en Cali". elnuevosiglo.com.co (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: El Nuevo Siglo. 12 August 2024. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  14. ^ "Catejas". hernandotejada.com (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: hernandotejada.com. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  15. ^ "Caja erótica". hernandotejada.com (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: hernandotejada.com. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
  16. ^ https://www.hernandotejada.com/obra-category/manglares/
  17. ^ "Obra - Murales". hernandotejada.com (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: hernandotejada.com. Retrieved 29 September 2024.
  18. ^ a b "Hernando Tejada". Enciclopedia | La Red Cultural del Banco de la República. 9 June 2023. Retrieved 4 September 2024.
  19. ^ "Exposiciones Individuales". Universidad del Valle. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  20. ^ "H. Tejada : retrospectiva su mundo : Noviembre 2005-Marzo 2006, Cali, Colombia, Sur América". worldcat.org (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: WorldCat. 2024. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  21. ^ "Tejadita, viajero y sibarita, en el Museo de la Tertulia, hasta el 22 de febrero". cali.gov.co (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: Acaldia de Cali. 16 December 2014. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  22. ^ "Hernando Tejada. Viaje de vuelta". elmamm.org (in Spanish). Medellín, Colombia: MAMM. 2024. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  23. ^ "Negros y el mar". artsandculture.google.com. Bogotá, Colombia: Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  24. ^ "Arte moderno en el Museo Nacional de Colombia (1948-1963)". revistas.uniandes.edu.co (in Spanish). Bogotá, Colombia: Universidad de los Andes. 29 October 2018. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  25. ^ "La alemana que saldó una deuda histórica de Cali: el museo de Hernando Tejada". elpais.com.co (in Spanish). Cali Colombia: El Pais de Cali. 3 February 2024. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  26. ^ https://enciclopedia.banrepcultural.org/index.php?title=Hernando_Tejada
  27. ^ a b "Hernando Tejada Colombian, 1924–1998". moma.org. New York City, USA: Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 3 September 2024.
  28. ^ "Retrato de Lucy Tejada - Pintura". banrepcultural.org (in Spanish). Bogotá, Colombia: Banco de la República de Colombia. 2023. Retrieved 2 September 2024.
  29. ^ "Negros y el mar". artsandculture.google.com. Bogotá, Colombia: Google Arts & Culture. Retrieved 2 September 2024.
  30. ^ "Teresa la mujer mesa". museolatertulia.com (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: Museo La Tertulia. Retrieved 2 September 2024.
  31. ^ "El organillero". hernandotejada.com/ (in Spanish). Medellín, Colombia: Hernando Tejada Website. Retrieved 2 September 2024.
  32. ^ "Organillero Hernando Tejada" (in Spanish). Medellín, Colombia: Sura.com. Retrieved 2 September 2024.
  33. ^ "El manglar del mico". museolatertulia.com (in Spanish). Cali, Colombia: Museo La Tertulia. Retrieved 2 September 2024.
  34. ^ "Mangal de Iguana Hernando Tejada - Tejadita". arteinformado.com (in Spanish). Barranquilla, Colombia: Arte Informado. Retrieved 29 September 2024.

Further reading

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  • Díaz, Hernán. Hernando Tejada: Fotografías de Hernán Díaz. Cali: OP Gráficas Ltda; November 1994.
  • Centro Cultural Comfandi. H. Tejada. Cali: Centro Cultural Comfandi; 20 June 2000.
  • Montaña, Antonio. Hernando Tejada. Cali: Feriva; 2003. ISBN 9583354880
  • Tejada Valencia, Alejandro. H. Tejada : retrospectiva su mundo. Cali: Alcaldía de Santiago de Cali; 2005. ISBN 9789589779439
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