The 1990s was a period of pluralism, a reflection of the 1991 Political Constitution which declared that Colombia was a Social State under the rule of law. The view of an increasingly globalized world prevailed, a world unified in accordance with the development of new information technologies, economic opening, educational policies and, above all, cultural policies. Unlike previous ways of thinking, globalization brought along a reaffirmation of identities differentiated by regional-local aspects that did not left aside the international scope open to new borders, at least cultural ones which had an impact on education and acknowledged the importance of academic research on a global context.
In front of the overwhelming momentum that art installations had as the hegemonic expressive medium in the region, printmaking, in all its introspection, withstood the wave of the so-called post-modernity and was able to maintain its place among other artistic genres. The exhibition Printmaking in Antioquia, held at the Medellin Museum of Modern Art in 1993, was proof of that.
Nowadays, the interest in multiplying an image from a single matrix so that a larger number of people can have access to “multiple originals” has lost its significance for many printmakers who are interested in printmaking as an experimental technical process, fundamental for their artistic identity. The methods and strategies are being renewed, new supports and new matrices are emerging as well as ways to approach them, new technologies; some artists move with great freedom throughout all the techniques in order to generate new creative possibilities. Traditional printing procedures serve as a basis for structuring an image that will be defined by high-tech procedures or the other way around. “Today, printing is no longer reproduction, but the production of originals in a modified environment of self-empowering reproductions.”
After studying printmaking at the International Center for the Study of Art Il Bisonte in Florence (Italy) in 1986, Hernando Guerrero led the coordination of the Printmaking Workshop of the Arts Faculty of the University of Antioquia between 1991 and 1998 approximately. Before the closure of the Printmaking Workshop in 1999, Luis Fernando Mejía joined the Arts Faculty of the University of Antioquia as a printmaking professor from 1997 until his death in 2004. After the dissolution of the Printmaking Workshop in 1999, Ángela María Restrepo founded the La Estampa Studio and joined the University of Antioquia as a printmaking professor in 2004. Beatriz Jaramillo joined the printmaking professors’ team of Medellín National University in 1995, followed by Elena Vargas, Edith Arbeláez and Augusto Solórzano. Mariana Renthel took the coordination of the Aníbal Gil Graphic Laboratory of the Arts Faculty of the University of Antioquia from 2017 to 2021; the workshop was named to give a special recognition to the printmaking master.
