Passing of Maestra Beatriz González (1932–2026)
With immense sorrow and deep sadness, Casas Riegner announces the passing of the Maestra Beatriz González on January 9, 2026, one of the most significant figures in contemporary art in Colombia and Latin America. Her departure leaves an enormous void, but also an invaluable legacy in the country's art history.
For over a decade, the Casas Riegner team had the honor of working closely with the Maestra, studying her work and accompanying its circulation in Colombia and abroad. During that time, we learned alongside an artist whose lucid, compassionate, and deeply critical vision taught us to read the circumstances that have shaped this country.
We are grateful for the years we shared, for her generosity, and for the trust she placed in us to represent her work. Born in Bucaramanga in 1932, Beatriz González's practice spanned more than six decades. Her work emerged from a deep engagement with Colombia's social and political context, drawing on mass media imagery, vernacular sources, and art history’s motifs to explore memory, power, grief, and collective experience.
From her earliest works in 1962, the Maestra began reinterpreting iconic works of Western art as a way to reflect on how high culture was assimilated in a country like Colombia. Over the years, she developed her own visual language, nourished by her fascination with popular images and regional press clippings that she collected until her final days. Her compositions, characterized by bold color palettes and a highly distinctive style, were realized on unusual supports such as furniture, objects, and curtains.
Her work transformed found images, such as newspaper clippings, postcards, and reproductions of canonical works, into graphic compositions that challenged conventional hierarchies of taste and representation. Her distinctive palette and incisive visual strategies earned her recognition as one of Latin America's most influential artists and a fundamental voice in global contemporary art.
Beyond her impact as an artist, the Maestra played a key role in curation, education, and art criticism, training generations of artists and scholars. Between 1978 and 1983, she coordinated the educational program at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO), where she founded the Escuela de Guías. From 1989 to 2003, she served as Chief Curator at the Museo Nacional de Colombia, leaving a significant mark on art history research in the country.
Working alongside the Maestra, Casas Riegner organized numerous exhibitions that demonstrated her unique sensibility and contribution to global art. Beatriz González has exhibited widely at some of the world's leading museums. In 2023, the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC) in Mexico City presented Guerra y paz: una poética del gesto, which subsequently traveled to the De Pont Museum in Tilburg in 2024. In 2025 and 2026, her work has been the focus of one of the most ambitious retrospective projects of her career. Beatriz González: a imagem em trânsito opened at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo in 2025, offering a comprehensive view of her artistic evolution. The retrospective will continue its international tour with presentations at the Barbican Centre in London and the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo.
"Beatriz González. Guerra y paz: una poética del gesto" Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, MUAC/UNAM, 2023. Photography: Oliver Santana
Her work is held in major international collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Museo Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the De Pont Museum, Tilburg. Beatriz González's influence remains present in the generations of artists, curators, and researchers who have been impacted by her work. Her legacy lives in the generations she trained, in the conversations she sparked, in the questions that remain open today. We are left with the example of a woman who taught us that artists exist so that memory endures.
We are profoundly grateful for the long and sustained relationship we shared with the Maestra. Her artistic rigor, intellectual generosity, and courage reshaped how we understand the role of images in society. As we mourn her passing, we remain committed to presenting her work and ensuring that her legacy, rooted in memory, scrutiny, and resistance, continues to inspire and challenge future generations. Casas Riegner honors her memory and commits to continuing to celebrate her legacy through the dissemination of her work and her critical, unique thinking in the history of contemporary art.
For more information, please contact: info@casasriegner.com
