The Winds of Omar Rayo: an expose of Colombian art as realized through the eyes of two different artists, each with a distinct perspective on a similar theme.

• Author: Herrera, Adriana
• Position: Aspects of Expressions - Interview

Colombian artist Ornar Rayo (1928-2010) didn't have to change his name like Emmanuel Radnitzky (Man Ray) did. His last name--which means "lightning bolt" in Spanish--coincided nicely with his brilliant personality from the very beginning. Both Ray and Rayo came from immigrant families, lived in rural areas, and shared a pioneering interest in optical art, or Op Art. Rayo maintained his interest in the genre and perfected the illusion of three-dimensional space on a plane.

The parallels between the two men don't end there. As young men, both made their living in commercial art--Rayo was a cartoonist and Rayan illustrator--and they were remarkably similar in the way that their lives and their work approximated lightning. In the panorama of the art world of their respective times, they were both like a sudden discharge of high-intensity electrical energy, though neither was understood completely at the time of his death.

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In 2007, Rayo participated in PINTA, Latin American Art Festival in New York. There, his work was promoted by the Durbán Segnini Gallery which has been working for decades to create spaces for the recognition of this particular current of abstract art. Op Art swept through South America and began to be expressed in new ways by artists from Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Venezuela, without making much headway in Colombia and Mexico. At the time, Rayo, who exhibited his work in many countries and whose works are part of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among other notable places, admitted that the contributions of Colombian artists had not yet attracted much attention. "We are still not very well recognized. We don't really exist yet," he said.

It was also decades before Man Ray was seen as one of the essential figures of 20th century modern and contemporary art, and for a long time--in spite of having worked with Duchamp in 1920 to create the first work of optical kinetic art, Rotative plaque de verre --he was only recognized for his original photographs of models and celebrities. But in art, as in life, the past is always under reconstruction.

I had the chance to cross paths with Ornar Rayo in various places and times, and I interviewed him on several occasions with the intention of capturing some of his creative and vital intensity. Writing about him now is a way of bringing together memories to value and appreciate the journey of a man who was probably the most important optical artist of...