GIOVANNI BUSTOS

Biography

Giovanni Bustos, born in 1977, is a Colombian painter and sculptor. He emigrated to Europe in 1999, at the age of 23, and settled for sixteen years in the city of Barcelona, Spain, where he developed and expressed his pictorial creativity. The young student’s sharp intellect once promised a brilliant future in the field of medicine, according to his father; however, his passion for drawing led him to begin working at the Fernando Botero Museum in Medellín, at the Miguel Ángel Umaña Workshop, and at the Luis Caballero Impressionist Painting Studio. As a portrait and landscape artist, he held his first solo exhibitions in government institutions in his home country.

Europe

With the good fortune of being welcomed by a vibrant group of bohemian painters in the small colony of Montmartre (Paris), he developed a deep personal sense of responsibility toward the true meaning of being an artist. With his characteristic humility, he absorbed the high level of artistry cultivated within those Parisian circles. As an avid reader and artist, he was driven by the desire to explore the sanctuaries of the great masters of painting throughout history.

He embarked on a journey of research through various places that had once served as studios—some itinerant, others improvised—as well as through museums and galleries in Paris, Amboise, Nîmes, Arles, and Normandy. He crossed the Iberian Peninsula, visiting Spain, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, coming into direct contact not only with works of art, but also with the artists themselves and the way they interpreted and captured their sources of inspiration.
Through these travel experiences, he was profoundly moved by the realization that, throughout art history, the great masters and the pioneers of influential schools remained alive—still breathing through those nearly time-worn canvases.