Antonio Caro
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One of the founders of the Conceptual Art Movement in Colombia, Antonio Caro’s idea-based works are rooted in the social issues of his country. He began showing work in the late 60s in Bogota and subsequently became an important figure in the global artistic scene, developing in over five decades a distinctive, humorous, and highly idiosyncratic visual language with an emphasis on text and other graphic elements. Some of his best known works appropriate and misuse the typography of iconic international advertising brands—such as Coca-Cola and Marlboro—as means to comment of the social and political conditions of his native Colombia and their relationship to the imperialist and capitalist hierarchies of power that now grip their reality. Although he initially gained notoriety as a conceptual artist, over the years his practice has resisted categorizations, easy commercialization—through his choice of materials such as salt, achiote, cardboard and paper scraps—and has consistently questioned the label of ‘political art’ through his distinctive use of sarcasm, wit, and critical sense of humor.
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One of the founders of the Conceptual Art Movement in Colombia, Antonio Caro’s idea-based works are rooted in the social issues of his country. He began showing work in the late 60s in Bogota and subsequently became an important figure in the global artistic scene, developing in over five decades a distinctive, humorous, and highly idiosyncratic visual language with an emphasis on text and other graphic elements. Some of his best known works appropriate and misuse the typography of iconic international advertising brands—such as Coca-Cola and Marlboro—as means to comment of the social and political conditions of his native Colombia and their relationship to the imperialist and capitalist hierarchies of power that now grip their reality. Although he initially gained notoriety as a conceptual artist, over the years his practice has resisted categorizations, easy commercialization—through his choice of materials such as salt, achiote, cardboard and paper scraps—and has consistently questioned the label of ‘political art’ through his distinctive use of sarcasm, wit, and critical sense of humor.