Obregón was born in Barcelona, Spain. He was the son of a Colombian father and a Catalan mother. The Obregón family owned a textile factory in Barranquilla, Colombia. He spent most of his childhood in Barranquilla and Liverpool, England.
Returning to Barranquilla, he decided to become an artist. In 1939, he studied fine art in Boston for a year, then returned to Barcelona to work for four years as Vice Consul of Colombia. He married Ilva Ras-Isla, the poet’s daughter, during his stay in Spain.
In 1948, he became the director of the School of Fine Arts in Santafe de Bogota, where he was influenced by the frescoes styles of artists Pedro Nel Gomez and Santiago Martinez Delgado. He left the School of Fine Arts and moved to France with his second wife, Sonia Osorio.
He later married his third wife, an English artist. After traveling in Europe, he returned to Barranquilla in 1955. Obregón died on April 11, 1992, succumbing to a brain tumor. He lived and worked exclusively in Cartagena for the last 22 years of his life, from 1970 until his death in 1992.
Career
Obregón presented his first solo exhibition in Colombia in 1945. He participated in the fifth and sixth Salón de Artistas Colombianos in 1944 and 1945, which attracted the attention of the press and critics.
In 1945, Obregón settled in Barranquilla, where he received the first prize for Dorso de Mujer at the first Salón Anual de Artistas Costeños and showed his second solo exhibition in February 1946.
In 1949 he moved to Paris and exhibited his works. all over France, Germany and Switzerland. He then moved to Alba, near Avignon, where he remained until 1955. This year’s painting, “Still Life in Yellow”, shows that his personal style was fully developed, with formal elements that began to distinguish him. Work.
In 1955, A Souvenir from Venice (1954) was purchased for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, making Obregón one of the few Colombians in the museum’s collection. In 1962, he won the Salón de Artistas Colombianos Award, making him one of the greatest Colombian artists of the 20th century.
