Inheritances of Carlos Colombino: Painting and the Making of a Democratic Paraguay

Abstract

This chapter discusses the condition of the Paraguayan artist in relation to the concept of modern universal art by showing the intellectual trajectory of one of Paraguay’s most versatile figures: the painter Carlos Colombino. According to the author, Colombino’s multiple involvements with the vast spheres of culture, art and politics should not be understood as a construction in any positivist, accountable or determinable form. On the contrary, he argues that in Colombino’s artistic journey it was the gift of freedom that was always at stake: the hard-fought freedom of any Paraguayan to be an artist as well as the freedom of the artist to be Paraguayan. Ultimately, Legrás re-elaborates the fundamental complexities that sustain art as an operation that intervenes in the struggle for freedom.