Beatriz González: Frieze of Comedy / Frieze of Tragedy

Why It Matters

González’s work redefines political art in Latin America, urging institutions to adopt decolonial curatorial frameworks that confront violence and challenge entrenched Eurocentric canons.

Key Takeaways

• González’s “Frieze” juxtaposes Colombian political comedy and tragedy
• Uses newspaper clippings to flatten and surrealize violent imagery
• Reworks European masters, exposing colonial canon through cheap materials
• Refuses pop or feminist labels, embraces ambiguous, irreverent practice
• Exhibition highlights decolonial, transnational approaches for Latin American art discourse

Summary

The Center for the Americas hosted a tribute to Colombian artist Beatriz González, whose retrospective runs through May 10. The program, organized with Barban Art Gallery, marked González’s passing at 93 and centered on her seminal “Frieze of Comedy / Frieze of Tragedy” series, which pairs a 1983 presidential portrait with a newspaper image of a murder‑suicide.

Speakers emphasized that González moved beyond early irreverence to confront Colombia’s endemic violence through a visual logic that fuses comedy and tragedy. By reproducing newspaper clippings, flattening figures and rendering them surreal, she forces viewers to feel the irrationality of conflict rather than merely documenting events.

The exhibition displays the two posters, a reworked Julio César Ayala ceremony and a slain corporal’s portrait, alongside re‑interpretations of European canon—Monet’s garden, Raphael’s Madonna, and the Mona Lisa rendered on cheap vanity furniture. Curators Li Johnson and David Chukano, plus scholars from Cambridge and ASU, highlighted her use of low‑cost materials to destabilize canonical authority.

González’s refusal to accept pop‑art or feminist labels and her decolonial, transnational methodology have reshaped Latin American art discourse. Her practice demonstrates how art can critique power structures without didactic narration, offering a model for contemporary artists and institutions grappling with historical trauma and cultural hegemony.

Original Description

Beatriz González (1932–2026) engaged systematically with political violence and experiences of grief across a multimedia practice encompassing painting, printmaking, interventions on furniture, and installation. Drawing from newspaper photographs, magazine clippings, and popular reproductions of European Old Masters in Colombia, González treated both traumatic historical events and iconic images of a male-dominated artistic canon with the same vivid palette and graphic visual language. Framing disparate registers of suffering, power, and tradition with a bold, vibrant aesthetic, her work foregrounds a productive tension between irony and mourning, accessibility and critique. Humour and stylisation emerge as critical strategies for bearing witness, shaping historical memory, and probing the affective dimensions of political consciousness.

The event takes as its departure point two unlimited editions of posters from 1983, which rework two newspaper images: the first, Frieze of Comedy, is of outgoing President Julio César Turbay Ayala at an official ceremony; the second, Frieze of Tragedy, is of a former corporal who had murdered his friend’s girlfriend and then committed suicide. Hosted in collaboration with the Barbican Art Gallery in conjunction with González’s retrospective exhibition, the event celebrates this central figure in Colombian modern and contemporary art. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, the programme explores how tragedy, grief, comedy, and joy become entangled in artistic responses to ethical and political turmoil.

The afternoon will feature a keynote lecture by art historian and curator Cecilia Fajardo-Hill (Arizona State University), followed by a panel discussion with Amalia Pica (artist), Rory O’Bryen (University of Cambridge), Sofia Gotti (Courtauld Institute), Barbican curator Lotte Johnson, and assistant curator Diego Chocano. The roundtable situates González’s practice within broader contexts of Colombian history and popular culture, and debates about political representation and dissent. Panelists will examine how popular imagery circulates across social and political spheres, and how and to what end artists negotiate the ethical challenges of depicting violence, loss, and collective trauma.

Organised by Dr Sofia Gotti (Courtauld Institute), Lotte Johnson and Diego Chocano (Barbican), this event is convened in partnership between the Courtauld Centre for the Art of the Americas and the Barbican Art Gallery, where the exhibition Beatriz González is presented from 25 Feb to 10 May 2026.