El claro oscuro de Martha Zamora

The chromatic sensitivity of Martha Zamora

Martha Zamora was born in one of the most beautiful and creative regions in Colombia. She came to life in a land where the coffee aroma resembles the concept of family and the awakening of hope. These vivid childhood experiences are reflected in her colourful paintings, which are especially made to leave a permanent impression in the senses. Martha’s artwork mirrors a nation that feeds from little amazing things: tasty fruits and exotic aromas, flowers that cheer up even to the most melancholic ones, impressive mountains, and a palette of greens that blossom in front of astonished pupils.

Manizales, the city where she spent her first years of life, is located in front of the terrific perpetual snow of Nevado del Ruiz, where you clearly have a proper perspective of the Andeans. Nonetheless, one of the major assets of these lands is its kind people. They are humble and future-minded people, full of productive energy, with many delicate and beautiful women, as feminine as the vibrant flowers painted by Martha. That special reflexive and soulful sensitivity is what creates a recognised and extended painting work made by Martha for more than twenty years. This work has been exhibited in countries such as Argentina, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Brazil , Panama, United States, Italy, among others. No need to mention that has been also in the galleries of the most important capitals of our beloved Colombia.

Now Martha pays homage to a nature of unexpected colours posing in an environment that she knows well: the lyric of the fresh and vivid paint with that fantasy breath of the tropic. Aromatic fruits as the guava that evokes Garcia Marquez, or generous in tastes as the pineapple, the sour sop or the always present bananas that accompany Colombian lunches. Shiny flowers as birds of paradise, heliconia, or the colourful and subtle roses present in the Bogota plateau.

There is a special homage to all the hard working women of this country of dreams and of unstoppable energy. I refer to the palanqueras, women descendent from the old slaves, who now sale fruits in the vibrant corners of the Caribbean. These women are gentle in forms and spirit, with affective voices and that make essential part of that traditional culture of the sea that welcomed warmly to Columbus and his travel mates. It is right there, in Cartagena de Indias, in the seven multicoloured bays of Santa Marta, and in the noisy and festive streets of Barranquilla, where we have seeing these afro-Colombians parading. They come smiling and willing to sweet the afternoon up and to refresh us with their baskets of fruits carried on top of their heads. They come at dawn from far corners to earn their subsistence with their daily work inspired in the love of those who want a prosperous future for their families and their country.

Martha is all this and much more. She is a strong woman, like all of these lands; a woman that paints with her fingers expressing with deep fibre of her sense of touch, leaving a permanent mark of a tender art that is happy to have born in a multicultural land like ours.

Claudia de la Espriella

marzo de 2009.

La sensibilidad cromática de Martha Zamora

Martha Zamora nació en una de las regiones colombianas más hermosas y llenas de imaginación. Vino a la vida donde el café huele a familia y a despertar de esperanza. Esas experiencias de infancia se reflejan en sus cuadros ricos en colores y especialmente hechos para tocar las fibras de la sensibilidad de manera permanente. En su obra pictórica vemos el reflejo de una nación que se alimenta de las pequeñas maravillas cotidianas , frutas de sabores y olores exóticos, flores que sirven para alegrar al más melancólico, montañas imponentes y verdes, toda clase de verdes que se abren ante las pupilas asombradas de quienes los observan.

Manizales, la ciudad donde pasó sus primeros años, está situada frente a la imponencia de las nieves perpetuas del Nevado del Ruiz y desde allí se tiene la clara perspectiva de la imponencia de los Andes. Sin embargo, una de las mayores riquezas de estas tierras está en sus gentes amables, sencillas, constructoras de futuro como pocos, llenas de energía productiva , de mujeres hermosas y delicadas , tan femeninas en todo que se parecen a las flores vibrantes que pinta Martha. Esa sensibilidad especial, reflexiva y espiritual es la que alimenta un trabajo pictórico reconocido y prolífico que ha realizado esta artista a lo largo de algo más de 20 años y que se ha expuesto en muchos países como Argentina , Costa Rica, República Dominicana, México , Brasil , Panamá, Estados Unidos, Italia ,entre otros, y por supuesto todas las capitales importantes de nuestra querida Colombia.

Ahora Martha rinde homenaje a una naturaleza de colores insospechados y se sitúa en un ambiente que conoce bien: la lírica de una pintura fresca y viva, con ese soplo de fantasía que tiene el ambiente del trópico. Frutas tan olorosas como la guayaba que evoca García Márquez, o generosas en sabores como la piña o ananá, la guanábana o los infaltables bananos que acompañan los almuerzos colombianos. Flores tan luminosas como las aves del paraíso, las heliconias o las coloridas y sutiles rosas que se encuentran en la sabana de Bogotá.

Y un homenaje especial, donde a través de ellas Martha enaltece a todas las mujeres trabajadoras, esforzadas, aguerridas que hay en este país de sueños y de energía desbordante. Me refiero a las palenqueras, mujeres descendientes de los antiguos esclavos, vendedoras de frutas en los rincones vibrantes del Caribe, mujeres generosas de formas y de espíritu, con voces afectuosas y que hacen parte fundamental de la cultura tradicional de ese mar que recibió caluroso a Colón y a sus compañeros de viajes. Es allí, en Cartagena de Indias, en las siete bahías multicolores de Santa Marta, en las calles bullangueras y festivas de Barranquilla, donde hemos visto desfilar a estas afro-colombianas, siempre sonrientes, siempre dispuestas a endulzarnos la tarde y a refrescarnos con sus palanganas frutales engalanando sus cabezas , quienes desde temprano y desde rincones lejanos llegan para ganarse la vida con un trabajo hecho de lucha diaria pero repleto del amor de quienes desean un futuro más próspero para sus familias y su patria.

Martha es eso y mucho más, una mujer de temple, como todas las de estas tierras, una mujer que pinta con sus dedos, se expresa desde la fibra profunda de su tacto y nos deja la huella imborrable de un arte hecho de ternura, de sutilezas y de la alegría de haber nacido en una tierra tan multifacética como la nuestra.

Claudia de la Espriella

marzo de 2009.

Martha Zamora, a stand out and disquiet artist from Manizales took the universe by her hand. She has painted for 30 years so it’s good that success has finally arrived to her.

The artist already transcended our frontiers and went abroad to show her work in countries of Europe and the U.S. as well as in South American cities, from North to South, down to the Patagonia.

She restlessly seeks, just like the greatest artists of the world do. She does research, she inquires upon shape and trace, upon the force of drawing, of composition, and specially now, upon the skillful handling of color.

It is in her recent series that Martha reaches the true aesthetic value of her oil works impregnated on her hands with which she places colors on the canvas, hallucinating, real, explosive though not violent through which a lyric symphony is expressed emerging from the sea, which is now the witness of her cosmos.

This new evolution of the artist, in her process of expansion to make a masterful talent out of her abstract art, with the sea as the evident subject, does not mean Martha leaves magical surrealism aside; her canvases are enabled by the faces of gypsies, virgins, flowers, fruits, atmospheres that come out from the white canvas. These are all elements that have given us true visual pleasure and compose her triumphal secret as well as the successful fruit of the work of several years with her original technique of “dactilavado”.

Olga de Villegas, December 2010.