Enrolled in the history of Colombian art, both by merit and by right, Armando Villegas is an exceptional case. Not only does he navigate abstraction and figuration with skill, but in both, the unmistakable signs of his attachment to the pre-Columbian traditions of his native Peru, embraced by the artist as an irrevocable proof of his identity, underlie and emerge. Affiliated with the avant-garde of the fifties, Villegas is soon recognized as one of the first abstract artists on the continent. It is “a dialogue between tradition and rupture… a work that resists definitive formulas,” as Óscar Collazos notes in the essay that opens this book. The artist’s inexhaustible power prevents him from being confined to a single form of expression, a single technique, or a single theme. The result? An inexhaustible body of work through which drawings, oils, mixed oil, sculptures, sculptural objects, murals, collages, and graphic work harmoniously flow.