Edgar Negret was born in Popayan Colombia on October 11, 1920.
Master Negret used to work with Industrial materials, processing and sometimes recovering different mechanical forms turning them in exquisite’s pieces of Art, representing shapes form the Nature such as the Sun, a Flower, a waterfall.
During the 1940’s Negret attended the School of Fine Arts in Cali Colombia.
Initial works where made in stone in patterns evocative of European modernists like Constantin Brancusi. He met the sculptor Jorge Otaiza, who influenced Negr
et’s vision and who introduced him to the modernist perspectives or vision of other artists from that time.
In 1949 Negret studied in New York and visit The Clay Club Center (Sculpture Center) where he met the artists Louise Nevelson and Ellsworth Kelly. By the early 1950s, Negret departed to Paris, where he had the opportunity to experiment and absorbed all the artistic scene from the city. He began working in metal following the constructivism tradition
In 1955, one piece from that time was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. In 1963, return to its native Country, Colombia, he won the Salon de Artistas Colombianos, becoming one of the most prominent Colombian sculptors of the 20th Century.
Negret’s work where exhibited throughout the world all those years to mention some of them, It was awarded at the the Bienal de São Paulo (1965); the Thirty-fourth Venice Biennial and was awarded the David E. Bright Sculpture Prize; presented his sculptures at Documenta (1968) in Kassel; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1970); Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogotá (1971, 1975); Arts Club of Chicago (1972), and the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas (1973); the Center for Inter-American Relations (now Americas Society) in 1976; the Contemporary Sculpture Center, Tokyo (1982); Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid (1983); and the Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (1991)
In 2010, he was awarded “Grado de Oficial” by order of the Congress of Colombia.
Negret died, on his 92nd birthday, October 11, 2012 in Bogotá, Colombia.