Pedro Nel Gómez Agudelo

Place: Anorí

Born: 1899

Death: 1984

Biography:

Pedro Nel Gómez Agudelo was a Colombian engineer, painter, and sculptor, best known for his work as a muralist, and for starting, along with Santiago Martinez Delgado, the Colombian Muralist Movement. He was one of Colombia's most prolific and prominent artists of his time, creating 2,200 square meters of fresco murals in public buildings. Gómez was born in Anorí, Antioquia, to Jesús Gómez González and María Luisa Agudelo Garcés. He attended the Academia de Bellas Artes de Medellín, where he completed his secondary studies in 1917. He then attended College of Mines of Medellín where he graduated in Civil Engineering in 1922. In 1923 he decided to move to Bogotá, where aside from working as an engineer and professor, he studied perspective and artistic anatomy with Francisco Antonio Cano. In 1925 he traveled to Europe and settled in Florence, Italy, where he met his future wife, and mother of his eight children, the Florentine, Giuliana Scalaberni. In 1930 he returned to Colombia, and became Director and professor of the Academia de Bellas Artes de Medellín. As a teacher Nel Gómez has an impact in inspiring a future generation of nationalist artists including Carlos Correa and Débora Arango. In 2019 the National Museum of Colombia held a retrospective of his work, entitled Pedro Nel Gómez: Relatos de una Nación (Testament of a Nation).