Andrés de Santa María was a Colombian painter. He was a representative of the art movement of Impressionism. His artworks framed the beginning of modern art in Colombia.
Background
De Santa María was born in Bogotá, Colombia, on December 16, 1860. He was the third son of Andrés de Santa Maria Rovira and Manuela Hurtado. He was born to a wealthy family that was involved in politics. Both his grandfather and his father held high official positions in the Colombian government for several years. In 1862, at the age of two, his parents moved to Europe. The family resided in London until 1869, moving then to Brussels.
Education
In 1878, Andrés de Santa Maria's father received a position at the Colombian Embassy in France and the family moved to Paris. Santa Maria's parents opposed his desire to become an artist. They forced him to follow a career in finances. In 1882, at the death of his father, Santa Maria was eventually able to study painting. He attended the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. The artist later visited workshops of Ferdinad Jacques Humbert and Henri Gervex. Prince Eugen of Sweden and the Spanish painter, Ignacio Zuloaga y Zabaleta, studied with him under Gervex's guidance.
The impressionist art movement had a great impact on Santa María's career. However, he was also interested in social subjects displayed in the artworks of Alfred Roll and through him, he became influenced by the realism movement. Santa María's talent was recognized for the first time when he was chosen to take part in the Salon of French artists in 1887, with his work titled Las Lavanderas de Seine. He then participated in the salons of 1888, 1889 and 1890.
In 1893 he moved back to Colombia, and joined the National Academy of Fine Arts in Bogota, serving as professor of landscape. However, de Santa Maria's work as a vanguardist artist breaking with the traditional academic painting in Colombia was controversial.
Santa María, together with his fellow countryman Luis de Llanos, initiated landscape painting in Colombia. In Colombia, Santa María held several exhibitions, including the Salón de Grados in 1897, when he presented horses, and also took part in the national exhibition of fine arts in Bogota in 1899. In 1901 he spent his holiday in Paris, where he became greatly influenced by the Post-Impressionist movement, including Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne.
At the end of the Colombian Civil War (the Thousand Days War), he moved back to Colombia, where in the year 1904, he was appointed a director of the Academy of Arts. This position he held until 1911. The year of 1904 was of supreme importance to the artist, as he was invited by the president of the republic, General Rafael Reyes, to perform an exhibition with the writers Sanín Cano, Hinestroza Daza and Max Grillo.
While serving at the Academy, Andrés de Santa Maria also established the school of decorative and industrial arts, in which other artistic techniques like pottery, wood and stone carving were taught. In 1910, he held an exhibition commemorating the centenary of the Independence of Colombia. There he exhibited forty-six of his artworks.
Leaving his post of the director of the Academy, Andrés de Santa Maria went to Europe in 1911. He travelled with his family to England, the Netherlands and France before settling in Brussels. At the outbreak of the First World War, he went to Paris where he befriended Antoine Bourdelle, a sculptor. During the war he travelled to London. He finally settled in San Sebastian, where he remained until 1918.
When the war was over, he returned to Brussels. During this, the third period of his career, he took part in exhibitions in 1936 in Brussels and in 1937 in London (Burlington Gallery, presenting 125 paintings made over a 30-year period from 1907). Even in his late years, Santa Maria remained active and held many exhibitions of his artworks.