ANIBAL OLIER BUENO
Born & lives: CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, COLOMBIA, SOUTH AMERICA
Website url: https://www.anibalolierbueno.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anibalolier
Born on September 3, 1947 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, South America.
He studied at the Bolívar Fine Arts and Sciences University Institution. Master in Drawing and Painting and Master in Plastic Arts. He has been a teacher and Director of this institution for more than ten years.
He is a University Professor in the Humanities area of the University of Cartagena, where he has worked for more than thirty-five years.
He has presented multiple solo exhibitions and participated in more than forty collective exhibitions both in his country and abroad, mainly in Beijing (China), Florence (Italy), Miami, New York (U.S.A.), Venezuela, Panama and Guyana.
Lives and works in Cartagena Colombia.
Dialogo / 150cm x150cm / Oil and acrylic on canvas
My work is mediated by the tendency of the New Figuration.
I think there is some neo expressionism when it comes to the application of color. The predominant red is the red of love and not that of the blood of violence. I also think that, despite being a plastic artist with a strength typical of the Caribbean region, the conceptual proposal comes from the desire for peace for my country, Colombia, bathed in blood by a historical atrocious violence.
That is why my Series, DIÁLOGOS, in which I represent figures embracing, understanding and respecting each other in an atmosphere with great geometric influence, is the feeling of response to so much perversity and intolerance with which we have learned to live.
Dialogo II / 150cm x150cm / Oil and acrylic on canvas
How would you describe yourself? And your artwork?
Conceptually, my art work aims to capture the new form of interrelation between human beings that, without mediating borders, ideologies, races or social conditions, find in the dialogue and materialize in the embrace the union and respect that must exist between all peoples of the world.
To get there, I use human figures immersed in atmospheres of color and geometrically delineated.
I am a humanist.
Madre Soltera / 120cm x120cm / Oil and acrylic on canvas
What drives you?
Life drives me. Also everything I want to communicate about life.
What is your definition of art?
Art is everything that a concept proposes within the communication of humans.
Where do you get your inspiration?
The only protagonist of art is the human, that is why it is always in my work of art.
Pareja Abrazándose / 130cm x130cm / Oil and acrylic on canvas
Where do you see your art going in ten years?
Art will always exist as long as humans exist, because the human is an artist by nature, he is creative, sensitive and imaginative.
Can you tell us what your 'Before I Die' is?
I will work in art until life allows me, that is, I will die working in art.
Pregoneras / 130cm x100cm / Oil and acrylic on canvas
Can you tell us what is happening now?
Humans have become desensitized to scenes of violence. For this reason, those of us who feel disgust for violence are committed to proposing scenarios of love, respect, dialogue and understanding.
In the studio
The following are some comments on my artwork:
“When talking about Anibal Olier I immediately think of a human figure marked by abstraction, movement and color. Elements that we could call vital and that are lacquered seals in their canvases.
If we talk about your pictorial reasons, we will say that you are interested in expressing those virtues of life that are sincere features of your warm personality.
In the face of the struggles that preach violence, Olier proposes the sincere possibilities of a hug. It does so after searching itself, with the same intensity as it does in the other, and then building it as a pictorial work. An exercise of encrypted communication that we could call in the way of the poet Charles Baudelaire “the heroism of modern life”, an attitude that Olier gives us in this exhibition, as who begins a new struggle.”
By DAVID LARA
“His current theme revolves around the communication that is established between two or more people in terms that can suggest a respectful exchange of feelings, ideas, convictions or arguments as observed in his series entitled Dialogues. It is also a rejection of the intolerance that has permeated our contemporary society where human rights, including the right to life itself, have lost their validity and forced respect, attacking the family nucleus that, once dissolved by factors external to its will, tends to weaken society as a whole. This circumstance fosters chaos, violence and instability that, in turn, contribute to the social decomposition that has disturbed our country throughout its republican history. In Olier's work the individual human figure predominates or in groups as anonymous symbols whose main intention is to highlight the need to unite around love and friendship as a way to achieve peace and to shield ourselves against the indifference and brutality of the times that they run. To achieve his goal, he uses emphatically contoured drawing and vigorous chromatic painting with loose and vigorous brushstrokes that add vitality to his compositions.”
By MARCELES DACONTE
"The proposals in formal plastic art, nowadays, can be sensations as placid as that of the painter Aníbal Olier, who proposes a sonority of color and line that transports us to the essential Americanism that cries out for the simplicity of the defined line of the figures allegorical pictures of the families always present in his paintings.
The proposed dialogue is essential for those who look at and appreciate the urban conceptual landscapes of a shameless work of an artist who invites the joy of life, without hurting the canvas with a tint of violence, despite its “bright” red color and that it is a look of hope in a society that has lost the sense of the "good" and the "beautiful".
Definitely, Olier is the welcoming proposal of Colombian art”.
By WINSTON CABALLERO
Pregonero / 140cm x120cm / Oil and acrylic on canvas