WUM EU: El Museo & Fernando Pradilla Gallery at DRAWING NOW PARIS 2013

Niederlauterbach.- Spring is definitely the season of art fairs throughout Europe in months in which vegetation begins to appear and gardens are a feast of blossom.

This weekend, at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, the City of Lights is hosting over four days, the seventh edition of the DRAWING NOW PARIS | Le Salon de Dessin Contemporain, the first European art fair exclusively devoted to contemporary drawing gathering more than 80 international galleries with the best of drawings in all its forms on display.

Carefully chosen by an independent committee made up of paramount personalities in the European art scene, the DRAWING NOW PARIS is focusing on 80 artists, one per gallery, presenting works on paper or cardboard, in black and white, or color. 

There are also collages, prints, mixed media, pencil, watercolor, gouache, ink, pastel which are used separately or together, with a variety of materials.

In addition, the fair is showcasing more than 400 represented artists exhibiting various viewpoints in terms of presentation, quality and diversity of work proposed by galleries, mainly from Europe.

From North America, only two galleries were selected, one from Oakland, California (Creative Growth) and an emergent space from New York (Show Room Gallery); from South America, only one gallery was chosen from Bogota, Colombia (El Museo/ Fernando Pradilla).

The Bogota-based gallery El Museo, is one of Colombia’s leading established galleries with 26 years in the business. Fernando Pradilla, is its director who also owns his eponymous space in Madrid which was established 12 years ago and is currently representing more than two dozen artists.

At DRAWING NOW PARIS, El Museo/ Fernando Pradilla is focusing on Brazilian artist Mauro Piva who is exhibiting his solitaires delicate faceless drawings.

Born in Rio de Janeiro and based in Sao Paolo, Piva, 36 likes to draw human figures or couples presented in whole or fragmented pieces as if it were impossible to recognize because he adds an anonymous and remote element making reference to identity issues.

Last year in November, Piva presented in Bogota an exhibition entitled “Retratos,” a series of portraits drawn in graphite and watercolor in which he took as a reference the Spanish master Diego Velasquez, who it is said earned extra money by carefully painting hands because they were for him the most important element in his work.



Other artists present at El Museo/Fernando Pradilla are: Venezuelan-born Starsky Brines; Colombian-born Manuel Calderon, Marco Mojica and Sebastian Camacho; Spanish-born Juan Francisco Casas, Moises Mahiques and Cesar Delgado.

The DRAWING NOW PARIS | Le Salon de Dessin Contemporain is directed by Philippe Piguet, an art critic and exhibitions curator who is also the artistic director of the Chapel of the Visitation in Thonon-les-Bains.

Piguet, 67 says that the art of drawing is a mean of expression common to all creators, across all disciplines and it signs and seals the artist.

“Drawing is not the exclusive preserve of any particular type of culture; it is a universal language shared by all peoples, through their history,” he says, “that is what gives it its identity.”